'Bob’s true test of a perfectly structured presentation was that the speaker should be able to ditch the PowerPoint slides and successfully deliver the same message using only the blackboard (...) most talks would indeed be better when boiled down to the bare basics: chalk board, presenter, ideas.' - ThreadSky

cyrilpedia.bsky.social • 10 days ago

'Bob’s true test of a perfectly structured presentation was that the speaker should be able to ditch the PowerPoint slides and successfully deliver the same message using only the blackboard (...) most talks would indeed be better when boiled down to the bare basics: chalk board, presenter, ideas.'

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edrybicki.bsky.social•10 days ago

Nah. Our science these days is HUGELY enhanced by decent pictures. Chalk and talk is for mathematicians.

cyrilpedia.bsky.social•10 days ago

It really depends on the topic of the (biology) talk. If the images are the point, great. But I specifically invite some speakers that I know give great chalk talks, especially for the PhD program.

jsxover.bsky.social•10 days ago

I think there's data saying chalk talks are better at engaging audience. Blackboard forces speaker to slow down and leave space for questions. And you can't hide behind pics.
Ponzy Lu used to force you to give chalktalk.
Fadi Lakkis is really good at it.

https://www.chem.upenn.edu/profile/ponzy-lu

edrybicki.bsky.social•10 days ago

I recall getting a death stare from a botanical colleague touting the virtues of "chalk and talk" for lecturing, when I asked him to go back three concepts and blow up the diagram. When he'd rubbed them out already 😎

jsxover.bsky.social•10 days ago

I'll go back to Ponzy and say there needn't be diagrams.
- in biology, important differences are massive and should be easy to draw and explain
- cartoons allow us to cram in assumptions where we don't have data

I do and enjoy doing both. I find audience is more pleased with chalk.

edrybicki.bsky.social•9 days ago

Teaching basic concepts, MAYBE. Communicating new scientific findings - not so much. Especially in biological sciences. Mathematicians and theoretical physicists can keep their white boards; I'll do my animated slides, thanks 😁

edrybicki.bsky.social•10 days ago

We used to get ours to do 5-min teatime talks with chalk - then we switched to PP because they needed to learn how to give decent short talks. Many ways to shave the cat 😎

cyrilpedia.bsky.social•10 days ago

The trick then is selling them, the evil genius market aint what it used to be

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