I ran across the following article, and find that I generally agree with the idea of "teaching naked" (except that I really hate this catch phrase because it's too cute by half and not something I could ever actually say out loud for fear of the snickers it would draw). But, beyond the horrible catch phrase, the idea is pretty simple - don't use computers in the classroom - professors should avoid the canned powerpoint lectures that seem to be increasingly common, and students should stop automatically opening laptops and retreating into their own little world as soon as they enter a classroom...
http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort-Strips/47398/ I don't actually think powerpoint by itself is the end of the world, but it tends to promote a kind of bad behavior in professors - many text books now come with power point slides already prepared (and this is a big part of promoting the text, making it clear that these are available for download as "instructor resources"). I'm certain that some instructors choose text books based on the availability of these slides (and would not choose a text that didn't offer this). A professor of this sort then gets the slides and thinks "ah, my lecture prep is done" and proceeds to go into the classroom and improvise their way through slides - making up content as they go along through the slides (especially as they read them for the first time in front of the class). These are the worst sort of lectures in that they mirror the textbook and therefore provide no additional information, and they also tend to be very dull because the professor isn't especially well prepared and spends a fair bit of time staring at each slide and saying "well, let's see, in this slide it says that...". When a professor has gone to the trouble of preparing their own slides, usually they result in pretty decent lectures because the professor knows what's in the slides and has put that info there for a reason. This is true until the 4th or 5th time the slides are used, at which point they become painfully dull to both deliver and to listen to. I have in fact sworn off the use of powerpoint in classroom lectures, and this is a direct result of the sabbatical I took in 2006-2007. I got the idea from "Reading Lolita in Tehran", which is a wonderful book that I think everyone should read, especially if you are at all interested in teaching or learning. I happened to read that during my sabbatical, along with some Wittgenstein and a few other things. Fair to say Reading Lolita had the biggest impact (sorry Ludwig). There is nothing in the book that says "don't use powerpoint", but if you've ever read the book you can probably understand that lectures given in the powerpoint style just wouldn't have worked at all, and that the teaching that you see done in that book really is pretty extraordinary and something to aspire to. So, if you are looking for a New Year's Resolution for 2010, consider Reading Lolita in Tehran - available at Amazon and no doubt most public or university libraries (was a big best seller a few years back). http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Lolita-Tehran-Memoir-Books/dp/081297106X Now, that's about powerpoint and professors - the other side of the coin is students and laptops. I am fortunate in that my classes are small enough where I don't find myself stopping for breath only to hear the "clatter clat clat" of one hundred keyboards being pounded on - and yes, everyone says they use them for taking notes but of course that's mostly a lie. :) It's chatting, it's mindless checking of email, it's social networking, it's all sorts of crap that is entirely appropriate during a really boring powerpoint lecture, but really doesn't fit in when a class is somewhat more interactive. So, I do think there's some shared responsibility for creating a good atmosphere in a classroom, and both "sides" can do things that really turn off the other and make it all real drudgery - imagine trying to give a lecture to a group of students more interested in Facebook or whatever... My own feeling is that powerpoint slides can be pretty useful as very short versions of textbooks or study guides, and should be used outside of class time (if at all). Make them available, have students review when and if they want (sort of like how textbook reading is done (or not)). One of my least favorite developments in teaching is the professor going to youtube and firing up a video for the students to watch during lecture time. There is something horribly perverse about that (in that it would be so easy to have students do that outside of class time). It's the 21st century version of the professor standing in front of the class reading from the textbook for a whole period. The nice thing about technology, I think, is that it actually makes it possible to do an incredible amount outside of class time, and that's where I try and use it myself (via my now ubiquitous and possibly infamous google groups and yes, I do assign lectures from youtube but students watch them on their own time since I *think* most have access to the internet). And so now I do try and carry on more discussion and do less repeating of what's in the textbook, and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't, and it still does puzzle some students who seem very anxious to define the limits of what will be on a test to the intersection of what is in the text and what we discuss in class - I foil them by telling them it's not the intersection but rather the union. :) In any case, no powerpoint slides last semester, and in fact I don't think I turned on the computer in the classroom one time. That's my plan for 2010 too. Happy New Year, Ted -- Ted Pedersen http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse
