Evolvable lectures

Powerpoint needs the option to RECORD WHILE PRESENTING.
This would change the world!

(because flipping classes in universities would change the world)

Jon Claerbout

Imagine a world in which a professor giving a PowerPoint lecture could begin by pressing a button to "record while presenting."  
After the lecture, each slide would have attached audio of the words the professor spoke of it.   (The speaker's laptop pointer activity might also be attached.)

Notice how the professor is now able to edit the video she made by re-speaking to individual slides.   Why would this be world changing?   Attaching the audio to each slide yields lectures subject to Darwinian evolution.

How to get flipped classes from busy professors:

The president of MIT interviews Sal Khan of Khan Academy on Youtube.   Twenty minutes into the video I'm feeling the wrong person is president of MIT!   The president asks Sal (20:43), "Do you think we will ever have a chance to change what happens in the classroom?"  

After a 90 second warmup, Sal Khan comes back with a challenge saying (22:29), "If MIT and Harvard change their classrooms, so the lecture hall is not the main focus of a classroom..."   Sal is referring to a "flipped" class.  

"Every engineering school in the country looks at MIT and says, 'What should we look like?'".

Sal continues, "I think in five years time you won't have an engineering school in the country that's giving lectures any more."

I flipped my class at Stanford, as did some of my colleagues.   I love it!   Students learn more.   I get to know them better.  

But when I push Khan's idea at Stanford faculty I hear, "I don't have the time to make a video."   True for some, but every time they give a powerpoint talk, they've already done the work of making a video!

Attached to each slide needs to be a snippet of audio. What the speaker said while she delivered the slide can be upgraded.
Attaching audio to slides yields lectures subject to Darwinian evolution.

Professors usually give away their PowerPoints. Students keep key slides for study. We need an industry exchange standard for voice augmented slides.   Software comes and goes, but file formats last forever.

When a speaker uses an on-screen pointer, the pointer location should also be attached to the augmented slide.   Pointers should be more diverse and more dramatic than tiny arrows!   A finger on an iPad could turn into the best pointer.   Here is a video of my pointer struggles.

An optional 4th component of the slide object is the camera on speakers face.   Easy for the laptop to capture.   Useful for openers, transitions, and endings.   Good for directing attention.