ppt and/vs. new visrhet smart stuff

i'll be talking about "personal blogs for professional WPA ethos" at the upcoming WPA conference (it's more than that, but you know how conference titles go). ironically, i lost my bid to continue as a WPA recently, but i nevertheless imagine that the inquiry will be engaging and dare i say "fun"? i worry a bit about being 10 years too late, but since i'm still relatively new to blogging (just over 1 year now), i'm going with it. and i had finally planned to ppt it because i couldn't bear the sound of my voice reading another paper. and i don't use ppt templates and often find ways of using it that are less than "evil." that is to say, i *never* read bullet points to my audience. there are still many, many, too many people who have not figured this out; so thrilled that they are finally "giving a PowerPoint," they rip through, reading what we can read, overjoyed that the "fade" or "wipe" slide transitions are "jazzing it up." worse is when the presenter who pauses to admire her/his little image or animation, wondering why the audience isn't laughing or whatever and maybe even prods them to do so with an uncomfortable giggle. ha. i've been there . . .

. . . as have many members of my campus community. here's a thing: when one of our U's top administrators gave his first campus-wide presentation, when we were still working on achieving what we are today, um, celebrating in a campus bash they are calling "UVUphoria" (take a minute. breathe) . . . so, early on in the talk, he slides his previous bulleted list aside after happily reading it to us, and there, we are witness to a slide of geese flying in v-formation. he used it to (obviously) talk about how (wait a minute) we are all working together toward the same goal. as i watched, i thought, "well now, those geese are held within the 4 corners of a frame, so they are, yes, indeed, flapping their wings, but THEY AREN'T GETTING ANYWHERE." ha. at least he tries, i guess, but how nice it would be to see something more aware of its visual impact on an intellectual audience. a girl can dream.

so but i just decided to ppt it and make my life easier when i read about new programs via John, and so now i've got to see if they are all that. i guess i should be excited, but my first attempts at working with 280slides was disappointing, given that it did not recognize the URL i input. it was my blog's URL, and since we'll be looking at blogs, these links will be essential. argh. i'll try to be hopeful. wish me luck.