RSS Syndication

Actually, there’s a redundancy in that title. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, and whenever you’re on a web site and see that funky orange icon to the right, you know that web site syndicates its contents. Most often you will see these on blogs (blogs, short for weblogs, are online diaries… you’re reading one right now!).

However, with the explosion of the blogosphere (which is a fancy way of saying that people spend too much time at work reading and writing on blogs), I guess people got tired of having to waste time visiting 60 blogs during the day and only wanted to know when there was new content to view.

Your myemail.indwes.edu Email Account

I was asked by the university to pass this information along. So, here you go: 

Please remind your students: As of March 01, 2008 all students now have an IWU email account. This will be our primary means of communication with students. Please tell you students that it is crucial they check this account on a regular basis. Instructions can be found at http://myiwu.indwes.edu.

Instructors used to get your personal email account that you gave to the university when you registered. However, now all we get are your myemail.indwes.edu accounts. So, if you want to receive emails in the future from your instructors, you might want to book mark the MyIWU site and check your email daily.

Bad PowerPoint: When Is Enough, Enough?

One of the topics we discussed on Wednesday was what the different types of learners get out of visual aids. Here is a quote from this article on bad PowerPoint presentation:

Remember, people process information in many ways. Some learn visually, others learn by listening, and the kinesthetic types prefer to learn through movement. It’s best to provide something for everyone. Let’s be very clear. Visual learners do not learn from bullet points alone; they learn from pictures, graphs, and images. Auditory learners do not learn from listening to sound effects like bells ringing and typewriters clacking. Instead, they learn from listening to an engaging speaker whose voice is powerful and who captivates their curiosity. And, kinesthetic learners do not learn from the movement of words on a slide. They learn from doing, touching, and moving around. They like to be involved and participate.

It is unfortunate that PowerPoint is designed with all these “bells and whistles” that obstruct communication, because the tendency and desire for many communicators is to put as many of these animations and effects into a presentation as possible. They tend to distract from the message, and at times can put off an audience completely. What we tend to forget as speakers is that it is not a fancy PowerPoint presentation or a flashy visual aid that will engage our audience, but our own ability to communicate our message to them in a way that interests and involves our audience.