Hacker News Reader

Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

An iPad or PowerPoint may be more "sophisticated" than an overhead projector and dry wipe pen, but I'm not certain they are better.

(Actually now I wonder if there is a tablet application which faithfully replicates the overhead projector and roll of acetate experience?)

View on HN

The best lectures I had at uni were some math lectures where the professor had an overhead with a transparency roll. He'd write on the transparency as if it was a blackboard, and could roll up and down as needed to review older equations or make room for new.

Blackboard worked well too, but not as good, since the professor could sit in front of the overhead so things lined up better, and the transparency pens had much better visibility than chalk on a (green) blackboard.

Most other lectures used PowerPoint, due to the professors being forced by the uni administration, but for me a PowerPoint lecture was barely worth the time. The information just wouldn't stick, since the PowerPoint format doesn't lend itself well to writing notes from, and without writing notes I hardly remembered anything.

The other factor is the pacing. If the lecturer is writing, on a transparency or blackboard, you can take notes at the same pace. PowerPoint allows stupid amounts of information to be delivered, which just washes over you--it's too much to transcribe, and too much to digest on the fly. Writing constrains the lecturer to delivering a reasonable amount of material, so that the participants can actually focus on it and retain it.

PowerPoint might be good for business proposals, sales and marketing, etc. But I personally think it's a travesty for educational use; there are few lectures I've attended which I found better for the unnecessary use of technology.

Yes, pacing is a huge factor. Written notes naturally lend themselves to be written, and with the professor writing them live, you usually have time to write them down and think about what you're writing as you go.

I caught many small mistakes, missing signs etc, while taking notes. I would not have caught that when looking at some slide.

I has a number of faculty who would print "slides" on acetate sheets to display using an overhead projector, they had the same potential for being overloaded.

It's possible to be a bad lecturer and use acetates. But physical constraints still act against it: they are bulky, you can't easily manage a lecture with 100 acetates, they have a tendency to slide onto the floor and make a jumbled mess, and they also cost money to make and take up physical space to store and move around.

While you can still abuse them, these factors limit how far you can take that abuse. PowerPoint knows no bounds.

I only used to print diagrams and figures onto acetates, leaving writing for the blackboard/whiteboard/blank acetates. You would use one or two for an entire session. I try to do the same with PowerPoint (well, Beamer), but some organisations increasingly mandate the whole thing be word for word on slides and stored in Blackboard for students to get. I find this wholly detrimental to the purpose of giving and attending a lecture, since it constrains the lecturer to this terrible presentation style.

I find pre-made slide formats like PowerPoint very difficult to pay attention to, both in an educational and workplace setting.

Overhead projectors that are written on while you are watching feel more interactive. I'm less likely to zone out or fall asleep when the content is actually being made in front of me, and can be changed dynamically based on questions from the audience.

One of the advantages of going digital is that you can distribute the slideshow files online.

I never wrote down any notes at university. My process was:

  - Review material on Moodle before lecture.
  - Go to lecture. Don't write anything.
  - Review material again on Moodle after lecture.

I don't know how you don't lose your notes, or have material missing from your notes because you were sick one day.

I wish I had a source, but I recall reading multiple studies that indicate your approach is preferable to writing tons of notes during the lecture. some keywords or doodles might work, but apparently furious note-taking is counter-productive.

Guess it depends heavily on classes. For the math oriented classes, I found taking notes from what the lecturer wrote on blackboard/overhead to be invaluable.

I very often did not have to look at the notes afterwards, but I _had_ to write them in order to remember. If I didn't write it down, I only recalled a fraction of it.

Of course, pacing is important, so that I could think about what was said and written, without having to overcommit to either. This is why PowerPoint doesn't work for me, as I have to chose to spend my mental capacity turning the PowerPoint into lecture notes, or listen. I can't seem to do both at the same time.

That's a good point. I find that my approach to programming lectures, for example, is quite different from my college days (psychology). And even then there was a difference between the 'typical' lectures and the ones on statistics and methodology.

Not a tablet app, but there are "smart whiteboards" that do a nice job of combining showing things + scribbling/writing.

You probably want to have both though. I don’t want to sit in a lecture taking notes. But OHPs were great for worked examples and answering questions that needed diagrams.

Honestly I'd never remember a thing if I didn't take notes. I take notes even today, whenever I'm in meetings or presentations:

https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2017/11/24/keeping-a-work-noteboo...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com