Presentations

Many people rely on what I will call linear presentation tools when they lecture. This includes software such as LibreOffice Impress, Google Presentation, MS PowerPoint, or Keynote. These tools are great for smooth, timed, linear lectures. I also use them from time to time, but mainly if I know exactly what to say. They are also good when I lecture with others, and we need to develop a presentation together. However, linear presentation tools do not work equally well for general teaching, where spontaneity is required....

Apple’s Keynote has been my preferred presentation tool for about a decade. For a long time it felt like the ideal tool, easy to use, powerful and flexible. But at some point, probably around the time when the iOS version of Keynote came along, the Mac version of Keynote started loosing features and became more limited than it had used to be. Since then, I have experienced all sorts of problems, including non-compatibility of new and old presentation file versions, problems with linked video files, crashes, etc....

I have been thinking about what I wrote about improvisation a couple of weeks ago. While preparing for a presentation last week, I was thinking about how linear my presentation software (Apple’s Keynote) is. It is as bad as PowerPoint when it comes to locking you into a linear presentation style. This is fine if you have a clear idea of what you would like to say and which order you want to say things in, but I often find that I have several sections that could be organized differently dependent on the audience, the time constraints etc....