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I get all the news I need from the BoingBoing blog

Submitted by hugh on Sat, 02/23/2008 - 11:30am

I admit that I look at the Pine Tree Legal and NTAP websites most every day. Other than that, though, the only website worth checking regularly is BoingBoing.net, the directory of wonderful things. It almost always has something worth knowing - usually many things worth knowing.

Yesterday it led me to an article on How Cognitive Science Can Improve your PowerPoint Presentations. The article summarizes recent work of Harvard psychologist Stephen M. Kosslyn, author of Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations.

We have a lot of bad PowerPoint in the legal aid community and could all stand to learn to do it right. This is particularly true since PowerPoint, being the easiest way to make a presentation, turns out to be the most frequently used.

The four rules laid out in the article are simple, easy to follow, and would go a long way toward making our presentations better able to meaningfully communicate our ideas to our audience.

Browsing the excerpt of Kosslyn's book on Amazon ($11.53 paperback) makes me think it would be pretty useful, as well. If I weren't a retired elder statesman I'd probably buy it.

 

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mixed reviews

Submitted by kcaldwell on Sun, 03/02/2008 - 6:22am.
Hugh has been trying for years to lure me over to boingboing. But usually it's something like Vending Machines for Crows or Scissor Mobile (where Cory, a boingboing regular and new dad suggests hanging this work of art over a crib?). Or the latest gadget for geeks. You can see a You Tube demonstration of Steve Demeter's latest innovation for iPhone doters here. ("a game [using] triangular pieces that [appear to] slide down towards the ground as if they were affected by real-world gravity.") So you can imagine my surprise when the Elder Statesman came up with something useful here. Maybe the boingboing guys are losing their edge??

+1 for boingboing.net

Submitted by jimmy on Mon, 02/25/2008 - 8:54am.
Agreed! I've been reading Cory and Xeni and all the rest for years. They have all of my areas of interest pretty well covered from social policy to futurism to all the best net memes. Especially with the addition last year of their gadgets sub-site.