PowerPoint Tip Makes Day Worthwhile

Much of the day today was spent on teaching enhancement, as Texas Tech's Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center put on several seminars to help faculty get a "jumpstart" on the new semester.

The first session today centered around not letting PowerPoint ruin your lectures, and I got a lot of great tips. However, the best tip of all was a seemingly minor point. When you are in the middle of a PowerPoint presentation, just press the period button (i.e., "."), and the screen goes black until you press it or the space bar again.

How cool is that? If you want to use the chalk board -- or an overhead -- no more having to quit the program, etc.

Yeah, yeah, I know this could be filed under, "You know you're a nerd when ...," but the cool (or is it sad) part is that two of my college of mass communications colleagues were equally excited about the black screen.

"I know. I circled that!" an anonymous colleague said with a huge smile.

And given the readership of this Weblog, I know that an equal number of people will find this cool as those as mock my nerdliness. So think of this post as a public service.

Happy blank screening!