Walter Bright wrote:
> BCS wrote:
>> I can't memorize speeches either (OTOH I really like ones where I can read it off a script) what I'd love to have is a power point setup with two screens for me, one with a copy of the projector and one with my notes (in inch high font) and thumbnails of the following slides.

Oh, that should be the default! Since the day the fist laptop came that shows a 2nd screen (instead of a copy), that should be standard issue with presentation software.

> I.e. a teleprompter!

Well, yeah. But using them so that the speech still sounds fresh really requires one to know the speech almost by heart. And a lot of practicing each speech, with live assistants.

Reply to Walter,

> Sean Kelly wrote:
> 
>> Some professors seem to think that lecturing about material that
>> isn't presented anywhere else will force students to attend class.
>> But in my experience it also creates a class that takes notes
>> furiously rather than engaging the material and asking questions.
>> Overall, I think it's a counterproductive strategy.
>> 
> In my experience, the lack of a textbook for the material was mostly
> the result of the professor generating his own material and thinking
> the existing textbooks were all inadequate.
> 

The next step (down) from that is the class where the professor wrote the text book. That's a bad thing because if you don't understand the lecture, the book won't help

Reply to Sean,


> Some professors seem to think that lecturing about material that isn't
> presented anywhere else will force students to attend class.  But in
> my experience it also creates a class that takes notes furiously
> rather than engaging the material and asking questions.  Overall, I
> think it's a counterproductive strategy.

At the other end, if the professor *only* lectures on what's in the book, what are they being paid for? Just talking? Better would be for the professor to lecture on application, the what/why (and not the how), how ideas are related, anecdotes and the like.

Reply to Walter,

> BCS wrote:
> 
>> I can't memorize speeches either (OTOH I really like ones where I can
>> read it off a script) what I'd love to have is a power point setup
>> with two screens for me, one with a copy of the projector and one
>> with my notes (in inch high font) and thumbnails of the following
>> slides.
>> 
> I.e. a teleprompter!
> 

NO! It takes about 10 (or 100) times a much work to get a speech down word for word. I just want to have a better handle on context and more notes than I get with the setups I've used.

== Quote from BCS (ao@pathlink.com)'s article
> Reply to Walter,
> > Sean Kelly wrote:
> >
> >> Some professors seem to think that lecturing about material that isn't presented anywhere else will force students to attend class. But in my experience it also creates a class that takes notes furiously rather than engaging the material and asking questions. Overall, I think it's a counterproductive strategy.
> >>
> > In my experience, the lack of a textbook for the material was mostly the result of the professor generating his own material and thinking the existing textbooks were all inadequate.
> >
> The next step (down) from that is the class where the professor wrote the text book. That's a bad thing because if you don't understand the lecture, the book won't help

My Physics courses were like this, and it was incredibly frustrating.  I think it was probably the reason that Physics at my Uni was reputed to be so difficult.

BCS:
> At the other end, if the professor *only* lectures on what's in the book, what are they being paid for? Just talking? Better would be for the professor to lecture on application, the what/why (and not the how), how ideas are related, anecdotes and the like.

Books are meant to be read before taking the lesson.
Among other things, a teacher in science/technical fields can:
- help students understand difficult concepts;
- give problems that require the student to invent some new idea or be creative;
- answer student questions.

Bye,
bearophile

== Quote from BCS (ao@pathlink.com)'s article
> Reply to Sean,
> > Some professors seem to think that lecturing about material that isn't presented anywhere else will force students to attend class.  But in my experience it also creates a class that takes notes furiously rather than engaging the material and asking questions.  Overall, I think it's a counterproductive strategy.
> At the other end, if the professor *only* lectures on what's in the book, what are they being paid for? Just talking? Better would be for the professor to lecture on application, the what/why (and not the how), how ideas are related, anecdotes and the like.

Exactly my feelings.  Reading the book at one's own pace is a good way to get all the nitty-gritty technical details down.  What lecture should be for is understanding the stuff at a higher level.  This includes asking questions, discussions, broad overviews to help students see the forest instead of just the trees, etc.  I tend to feel that huge lecture hall lectures, were any interactiveness is impractical, are largely a waste of time unless the lecturer is exceptionally engaging and/or you have enough background in the topic already that you're mostly interested in understanding another point of view on the subject rather than learning it for the first time.

Simen Kjaeraas wrote:
> On Mon, 04 May 2009 20:47:10 +0200, Sean Kelly <sean@invisibleduck.org> wrote:
> 
>> == Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org)'s article
>>>
>>> I don't agree. I think there is much more at work here. Slides are
>>> limited in size and text content simply because there is so much
>>> information a person can absorb simultaneously by hearing and seeing. So
>>> the slide with text is simply an anchor, a high-level memento to rest
>>> one's eyes on, while the speaker gives some detail pertaining to the
>>> high-level points that the slide makes.
>>
>> For lectures I basically have a choice between two options:
>>
>> 1. Take notes and not remember a darn thing that was said.
>> 2. Not take any notes and remember the lecture.
> 
> I'm fond of using the third option: Not take notes unless something
> unexpected pops up.
> I tend to use notes for remembering things I will look up later,
> not for learning directly.

I take notes so that I will remember what was said five minutes prior. I never review notes after the lecture, but during, it helps me work through the examples given, at my own rate, and change the notation used.

For example, I was at a compilers lecture and took twenty minutes to understand a parsing example. Then I changed the notation slightly in my notes (the professor was using states 1, 2, 3, ... and rules 1, 2, 3, ...; I changed the states to be S1, S2, S3, ... and the rules to be R1, R2, R3, ...) and suddenly everything became a lot clearer.

Sean Kelly wrote:
> == Quote from BCS (ao@pathlink.com)'s article
>> Reply to Walter,
>>> Sean Kelly wrote:
>>>
>>>> Some professors seem to think that lecturing about material that
>>>> isn't presented anywhere else will force students to attend class.
>>>> But in my experience it also creates a class that takes notes
>>>> furiously rather than engaging the material and asking questions.
>>>> Overall, I think it's a counterproductive strategy.
>>>>
>>> In my experience, the lack of a textbook for the material was mostly
>>> the result of the professor generating his own material and thinking
>>> the existing textbooks were all inadequate.
>>>
>> The next step (down) from that is the class where the professor wrote the
>> text book. That's a bad thing because if you don't understand the lecture,
>> the book won't help
> 
> My Physics courses were like this, and it was incredibly frustrating.  I think
> it was probably the reason that Physics at my Uni was reputed to be so
> difficult.

My College Physics teacher wrote our book. I never found it good. But then, he was a bodybuilder. Once he had connected a heavy iron core coil in series with a lamp and a battery. And he had an iron anchor, which he removed from the coil. The lamp blew, and he said "gee, what a coincidence". I remarked dryly, "that's what you get for removing the anchor". From that day on, he hated me. Later in a big exam, he came to my desk and said "well, einstein, just see to it that you get full points". Thaks a lot.

BCS wrote:
> Reply to Georg,
> 
> 
>> I was always terrible at memorization. I couldn't learn my lines in school plays, and once I starred in an educational movie. The director was pulling his hair because I couldn't remember 15 secs of lines at a time. If I make a presentation, I simply have to get familiar with the subject, and then have the slides, like, be my cheat sheet. I always envied the guys (often sales reps, or evangelists), who did the same thing word-for-word, even if I saw them again after six months.
> 
> I can't memorize speeches either (OTOH I really like ones where I can read it off a script) what I'd love to have is a power point setup with two screens for me, one with a copy of the projector and one with my notes (in inch high font) and thumbnails of the following slides.

If you haven't before, check out presenter mode in powerpoint.  It's pretty much what you just described.  Only takes two screens, one the projector and the other your laptop's display.  The laptop display has 3 panes: a sliding window of the slides; the current slide; and your notes.

Later,
Brad