Everyone knows that learning sometimes is a painly task, and is seen more as an obstacle for many students in more areas than can be cited in a bible-sized book.
Now I'm a Masters Student, and as expected, the load of work to each course I'm getting is way more huge than the "average graduation rhythm". Reading whole chapters to try to answer a not so nicely composed test is really demotivational, specially when you try to put all your efforts and get a low grade.
Books are great and is still the primary source of consistent knowledge on the world. Ebooks are great (true story...) but is still a book. No one have time to read a whole technic book during a course, and if you have, congratulations, you're one of the few that still have (patience and time, I mean).
That's where the Slide Set works. Reading slides is a practice over millions students, believe me, nothing is more rewarding to a college student than find a good set of slides that well explains all you need in few words (and with examples!).
Slides are a source of condensed knowledge, and if you know how to use it, is a good way to learn things the faster way possible. Many education professionals (in other words, teachers of all kinds), use it as a tool for his/her own sake - "It's a thing that helps me to organize my classes...".
I think the opposite. "Slides are tools not just for me to bring knowledge, but to share this knowledge in a simple and straight-forward way". Making a good slide set is more than a work, is an art. And don't think a slide with a figure is art, specially a picture of something that has no relation with what you're talking about in the rest of the set.
I intend to be a Teacher/Researcher in a near future (maybe next year if all goes right), but I'm still a student and have been thinking about how to organize a self-contained course, meaning that the material I use to give classes is the essential and is good enough to support my future students. This is a really tough task that demands time and hours of dedication (tried to make slides for a 30 min classes, consumed 6 to 8 hours of my time).
The thing is, who is going to give a class really needs to understand the real essence of each subject and do a travel-pack for anyone that wants to learn about that. And more, in a way that is not just words floating to the infinity and beyond. Things that are apparently linked to nothing are just ignored by most of people (including me).
Other important factor is, if you want to make good slides, having a good sense of colors and spacing is essential. A messy of fonts, colors, figures and GIFs is a children's playground, not a didatic material. Notions on transactions and using comments fields is a good way to organize your slides.
Too many words? BAD! Just an Image? BAD! An example without an explanation? Dispensable.
Exercises? At least a hint on how to solve is good too.
A good recipe to making a slide set (works for me at least):
- Use PowerPoint or Keynote : both have great "standard color schemes" that is way more adequate to all kinds of presentations. If you are not a design related professional, leave the work to the experts.
- If you don't know, learn to use TEMPLATES : templates are there to use, you want to put an Image with a sub, use the template for this, there are many of them to use.
- Present a Topics slide with the Agenda : presenting the schedule of what you will present on that slide set will improve your time synchronization during presentation and give a time notion for your target public.
- Shrinking is not an option : If you want to put a huge text/citation, don't reduce too much the font size, just cut it into smaller pieces and distribute in more slides, maintaining the main title.
- Animations are welcome : If you want to put some simulations (like an algorithm tracing, a network behavior, an industrial description) it's always very welcome. This kind of resource helps understanding specially iterative processes.
- Avoid complex transaction effects : You won't have the transaction resource if you export your slides to PDF, so, using animations like the running stickman on a block of paper is more adequate because it will not depend on effects.
That's more things to do and to know, but I will stop here.
Learn to use your own knowledge to express and share to another people is a great and rewarding task. Try it! =]
Hope you enjoyed!
Muito bacana Toni
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