Listening to a podcast today I realized that Marshall McLuhan's famous "the medium is the message" is terribly valid for what I find deplorable in PowerPoint presentations.
You can talk about effective teaching methods all you want, unless you utilize those to teach teachers, your points are ineffective. Ms. Yagi showed her mechanisms in the sub course, and Mr. Fukuhara showed his affability and connection- and that course was worth as much as my Master's. So now all these teacher candidate are talking all about effective teaching and I, as their student, am never engaged. Jim's technology integration falls flat because I see lazy person who couldn't finish a thesis or keep working in the trenches either. So I don't care, and won't.
If the medium is the message, my presentations will have juggling and song. And planning will be authentically half-ass, with powerful, active execution.
I guess that’s my issue with educational apps as well- technology is a quick distractor, so no matter how “educational” the material is, it’s still emphasizing flashiness and speed over depth and quality of thought. The medium of a screen is simply too detrimental.
