Comments on Slideshare predictions and wishes

• Slideshare mobile
• Posted by sophie , librarian at University of South Africa on October 15, 2009 at 5:00am EDT

• Thanks for the post Joshua - I've been using SlideShare for a few years now and I find it an excellent way to share presentations with students.

  Slideshare does have a mobile version available called SlideShare Mobile available at http://www.slideshare.net/mobile - I've never used it and it would be interesting to find out what people think of it

• thanks Sophie - Slideshare mobile
• Posted by Joshua Kim on October 15, 2009 at 8:30am EDT

• Thanks Sophie for the pointer to http://www.slideshare.net/mobile

  I was thinking of an iPhone/iTouch App - although maybe mobile browsing would do the trick.

  An app could do cool things like build in commenting - and maybe even authoring (voicing over a slideshare?).

  Thanks again..I'll check it out. Josh

• Why?
• Posted by Jonathan Dresner on October 15, 2009 at 9:00am EDT

• Never heard of it. Took a look and found exactly what I expected: an archive of powerpoint, etc, with public sharing.

  Why would I put my work on there? If it's a conference presentation, I want to turn it into a publishable article. If it's classroom materials, my lectures are my intellectual property -- and my students' work is theirs, besides being student work -- which I share with my students because my institution pays me to do so. What's the value to me of sharing?

  Don't get me wrong: I believe in a great deal of open access, and I have made many of my classroom resources available online (<a href="http://dresnerworld.edublogs.org/resources">http://dresnerworld.edublogs.org/resources</a>) but why would I put them in a commercial archive which, as you note, is just begging to be taken over by Blackboard, Google or some other profit-based conglomerate?

• Want My Presentations To Be More
• Posted by stevenb on October 15, 2009 at 9:30am EDT

• I can understand the educational value of an instructor using slideshare - although I can also see concerns about inappropriate use of intellectual property. With respect to conference presentations, I'm trying to create a presentation experience that is directed to people in the room. If people can get the same experience just by looking at the slides on slideshare, then I'm not trying hard enough to create a unique learning experience for my audience. A good example might be the video you can watch of Jesse James Garret delivering a presentation about user experience at UX09. If I just looked at his slides on slideshare it just wouldn't be the same experience. Voiceovers could help, but a good deal of the presentation experience is found in the presenter's gestures. That said, I could aim to create a totally different experience for a virtual presentation where the audience could not see my gestures. That could work better on slideshare, if they had the voiceover technology.

• quick response to Jonathan
• Posted by Joshua Kim on October 15, 2009 at 10:00am EDT

• Jonathan...thanks so much for the comment. I have a number of reactions...but I'm hoping that others will jump in. Mostly I want to say thanks for posting a contrary view. One of my worries about my community of learning technologists is that we agree with each other too much. We have the echo chamber danger. Our debates risk loosing relevance if they do not include enough divergent viewpoints. I hope that through dialogue our stances will be moderated, rather then hardened, and we model the inclusive dialogue that we want for the courses that we work on. So again..thanks...Any responses to Jonathan's ideas?

• Culture clash
• Posted by Dr. Pepper , Academic-in-training at US - northeast on October 15, 2009 at 10:00am EDT

• There are five thoughts on the topic based on what I've read in the article and the comments so far:

  1. I love SlideShare, it's a treasure trove of information that I've used often in the past year. More content however is not necessarily better. It's the YouTube paradigm. Lot's of good content, but also a lot of crappy presentations to wade through to get the content you want (unless you get good content filtered through your social network)

  2. There is a culture clash upon us. Many of us young'ns want to share what we do with the world, and we are OK with working on it slowly and polishing it up as we go. This includes presentations. Many of the older guard, especially faculty whose tenure and promotion hinges on their academic writing and presentations, are reluctant to put their material out there before they've polished it to a a nice shine. Some people just don't want to share, and others are trapped by the system they are in.

  3. As far as IP protection goes, it's just an illusion. You give something of yours to your students. They give it to their friends, and so on. You are no safer by keeping your things off slide share than putting it on it. At least with slideshare you have the option of preventing downloads and you get the "+1" in reputation that you would not get if you hadn't shared your work.

  4. Academic work builds upon other academic work. If your work is not seen, you are missing out on collaboration opportunities.

  5. I do agree with stephenb about the intended audience and the message their receive. Presentations built for an audience that is deaf (which is all of us are on slideshare) than an audience that is live and with you when you present (and presumably can hear you and is paying attention to you). Here though I will play devil's advocate: I did see a presentation recently on slideshare that was made for in-person delivery - the topic was cognitive overload - while I wasn't there, and I've missed a lot of what the presenter probably said, I did get a good overview of what cognitive overload is and how you can minimize it. Granted I am only getting about 10-20% of the message, but that's still good if you don't know much about the topic to begin with.

• Posted by Thomas on October 15, 2009 at 12:45pm EDT

• Slideshare? Who cares? Slides are antique, linear, 20th century technology. You have more flexibility writing on a blackboard than you do giving a ppt presentation.

  The future is in non-linear, interactive presentation technologies.

• SlideShare signup is disabled
• Posted by Mike , Director, Teaching Center at Hawaii Pacific Univ on October 15, 2009 at 3:00pm EDT

• Slideshare signup-for-account page accepts data, but its SUBMIT function does not work, disabling the whole process. HelpDesk is no help, since to post you must have an account.

• Voice Thread
• Posted by Jerry , Professor/Science Department at Corban College on October 15, 2009 at 3:45pm EDT

• For as little at $5/month, an instructor can post slides with audio narration and allow students to either comment through VoiceThread. See the Higher Education page at http://voicethread.com/pricing/highered/ for more details.

• Non-linear slideshows
• Posted by Clayn , Program Coordinator - General Education at Idaho State University on October 15, 2009 at 4:30pm EDT

• If you haven't checked it out yet, I recommend Prezi as a very interesting PP alternative. While the presentation can follow a user defined path, the presentation is laid out on a single open area where all the information is available and where the presenter can break out at any time. http://prezi.com

• Posted by Thomas on October 15, 2009 at 5:30pm EDT

• Yes, prezi is good, but see ahead.com for a less expensive alternative with more features. But also note that one-page zooming presentations can be realized in ppt too. It's the new conception of how to present that's significant, not the specific software. And note that the one-page concept map paradigm that prezi and ahead both use goes back to the old chalkboard model, plus bells and whistles.

• Still, why?
• Posted by Brian on October 15, 2009 at 8:00pm EDT

• So far, no one has really addressed Jonathan's questions. I agree with him. Why should I post my presentations?

• Posted by Finley on October 17, 2009 at 4:00pm EDT

• @Jonathan and Brian
  First of all Google taking over SlideShare is just a prediction. Even if it happens what is the problem? Still your work will be taught to or read by millions of students around the world. What finally matters is the knowledge transfer to someone who is on the other side of the world and SlideShare is one of the facilitators.

• Posted by Rich on October 19, 2009 at 10:00am EDT

• @Jonathan

  Yes there are good reasons not to share so I would disagree with the assertion in this post that "every presentation that you make should be posted up to" Slideshare. Services like this are valuable for the convenience of publishing work in a nice format and for creating a pool of resources to browse. I share some work there for these reasons: it's easy to share and I reciprocate to a resource I find valuable. I also know I am giving my work away. I have to decide if that helps or harms my long term interest.

  One thing we should consider is that, if we find these third party services so valuable, why do we not create our own in which our institutions set the terms of use instead of handing that power over to private companies?