I’m not really happy with this presentation.  It could have been better organized.  Maybe I’ll reorganize it tomorrow.  But for a first draft, it’s not horrible.

I’m increasingly struck by how important it is to have digital aids to assist my students. They respond to the visuals; they hang their ideas about people, places, and events based on the images I choose and the words I say.  The tools — like slide shows — become part of the message: “You live in a world in which presenters should communicate ideas with images, and the process of image selection and text-matching-image is a critical one.”  The days of chalkboards are over, almost everywhere except schools… and maybe whiteboards, even, are a dying breed.  But slide-decks don’t allow for the same spontaneity, the same whimsey or immersive gravitas as a whiteboard or a chalkboard.  And a Mimeo or SmartBoard just isn’t the same.  What are we giving up, at the same time that we take on a whole new set of programmatic tools?