PowerPoint Hypnotic Classroom

When google make these pareidolian / synchronistic gifts, uno no puede sino descubrirse, de la cabeza a los pies, ante el creador de gugel, y el recrecimiento inmenso de gugel, que ya somos todas, y ante la creadora humanidad, y si la autopoiesis es recreación, recreandote y recreandote, es como si el recreo, no tuviera fin, ni principio, pues que si la creatividad, viene de la creadora vida, es tan creativa, porque la acción, de un ente creado, vivo, es tan creativa, como su movimiento creador y creativo, sea ensalzado, y así pues esa creatividad infamemente animada, taermina con picassos y dalíes, sea su movimiento animal de su cuerpo animal, y animable, sea tambien ensalsado, ean ensalzados sus ricos lenguajeares, sus imitaciones de sonidos, sus aptitudes más variopintas y circenses, ese esel animal que tienes delante en el aula, fíjate si será animal, que acabo de encontrar, en el libro rojo y verde del reino animalia, que viene el ser viviente y disfruton, del XXI, como "especie suplente", pues se teme que vaya a salir del rojo, de la extinción, que el paron reflexivo de la crisis, augura ya una pos crisis rapidita, vamos al hilo que se mueven estos bits por a squí...

Looking for "Hypnotic Classroom" in google, I found this delicious result, "linking the serpent, on the other side"...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qXVF_ObedKUJ:chronicle.com/forums/index.php%3Ftopic%3D75217.20%3Bwap2+hypnotic+%22lecture+classrooms%22&cd=1&hl=es&ct=clnk&gl=es

In some courses, I have a mix of PowerPoints, if the publisher has provided them for, say, the intro survey textbook. Often, those are very wordy, with poor visuals (not cropped, not readable from a distance in large-lecture classrooms, and the like). So I also post those on the CMS as study tools, training students to know that they need not write down everything on those and ought to listen to me, too, since they can resort to the CMS for review. Those publisher's PowerPoints are intermixed with my own, which are far more visual and not posted on the CMS.

In those courses, PowerPoints are used in the lecture portions, not in the discussion portions. For the latter, lights are on to the max. That is the downside of any visuals, I find -- the lower lighting that seems to signal to some students that it's nap time. But some do so when lights are on, too, and I will not give up the visuals for the majority of students who enjoy seeing the past, not just listening to me talk about the past.

mountainguy:
Like others, my experience has been that students find PowerPoint hypnotic and will copy all text down word-for-word instead of thinking with their brains. It also seems to lead to flaky behavior from students who think that it lets them off the hook for taking notes. Despite that, I'm not entirely opposed to PPP. I just use it sparingly--for charts and graphs, and for giving assignment directions.