Legal Commentary

As the new semester here began last week, I used my tried and true method of teaching big classes with powerpoint slides.  (For some reason I can't access the permalink to my Sept 1/05 post about why I love powerpoint, but you can find some reflections by Kristin Hickman here and the original post in the archive here.) My experience with powerpoint in bigger classes the last two years has been consistently good in large measure because it freed me from the podium and I felt liberated to wander around the room and still have my notes available to help me guide my class.

This week, however, I've begun to experiment in my last two class sessions: crim pro with about 45 students, and crim law, with about 63 students. I have the slides on the computer screen at the podium for me to look at but I haven't actually been projecting the slides to the class. Certainly with crim law, which I'm now teaching for the fourth time, I feel more comfortable moving around the class even without the slides nearby or projected. To a slightly lesser degree, the same is true with crim pro now that I'm teaching it for the second time.  Importantly, I think the students feel they are connecting to me more in the conversation without powerpoint slides even though people with aural comprehension issues (like me sometimes) might prefer to see the point rather than to hear it.

I wonder if powerpoint might be the teacher's "laptop." If we're willing to get rid of student laptops to facilitate improved educational conversation, then perhaps we should chuck our laptops too, including powerpoint.  I think I'll do a series of experiments and see which I think is most effective.  One thing's for sure and not surprising: the anxiety about using powerpoint or not certainly diminishes the more you do this and that's something to savor rather than endure any nightmares over.