On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Richard Pisacreta wrote:
> I just started getting into powerpoint slides for my classes
> and I was wondering if those of you that use powerpoint
> attach sound effects or clipart to some slides.
Jim Matiya responded with a handy site. But Jim's post
prompts me to point out that there's much more you can do to
enhance PowerPoint slides than import clip art.
Generally, I get most of my stuff from the web, and an occasional
image scanned in from textbooks. To illustrate the kind of visual
images I use, these include such things as:
Photographs and portraits of famous psychologists (William James,
Lorenz and his ducklings, Skinner, Mozart), cartoons and comic
strips which relate to course topics, lots of graphs taken
directly from publications, pictures of things I'm talking about
(a polygraph, neurons, brains, MRIs (e.g. that famous one of a
couple doin' it in the MRI), diagrams of inner ear, retina,
limbic system, Mike the headless chicken (thanks to TIPS for
that), map of France to show where the Wild Boy came from,
redback spider (in discussing the charming habit of the male who
commits suicide by offering himself to be eaten during sex), a
swaddled baby, a crying baby, skull of Phineas Gage, photos of
Down, William, Turner syndrome individuals (organization web
pages helpful here), lurid poster of B-movie "The Serpent and the
Rainbow" and image of puffer fish for discussion of tetrodotoxin
in neurophysiology, poster for film "Lorenzo's Oil" for
discussion of adrenoleucodystrophy, photos of twins, conjoined
twins, advertisement for diet aid which makes outrageously
unscientific claims, book jacket for "The Death of Innocents" for
discussion of crib death, and much more. Actually I probably
spend too much time surfing the web looking for this stuff but it
makes an interesting challenge to find it.
As for sound, I use it sparingly, although I do have a few clips
for educational purposes, such as a recording of Freud reading a
speech, birdsong (to illustrate a discusion of, what else,
birdsong), a Doppler effect racing car demo (in explaining a
method to track movement of the basilar membrane). For humour, I
may insert a clip of applause to end a section, a fanfare
to introduce an important point, or the Jaws theme before
announcing a test.
One thing I've learned is to keep an eye on the format of the
image and the size of my PowerPoint files. Since I can't always
tell what the format or size is, I routinely import each image
into Microsoft Photo Editor, and make sure I save it in JPEG
format. Then I insert it into the slide.
Before I started doing that, I unknowingly created some
PowerPoint lectures taking up huge amounts of memory. As a
result, I once lost a lecture I'd been working on all day (it
crashed the computer, and the file was irretrievably corrupted).
After that, I made sure that all my images were in JPEG, and no
file was larger than 1400 KB. You can get file size information
by clicking on the "details" icon before you open the file.
-Stephen
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Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470
Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661
Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lennoxville, QC
J1M 1Z7
Canada Department web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy
Check out TIPS listserv for teachers of psychology at:
http://www.frostburg.edu/dept/psyc/southerly/tips/
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