I worry this model could lead to a "wall of text" rather than forcing the presenter to be concise, speak to the concepts, and rely more heavily on images. The format is good for academic lecture scenarios but I'd probably just use Jupyter, as noted by others.
I get that it’s usually seen as bad practice to write down all the points and read from the slides, but honestly, I like that style sometimes. My monkey brain gets distracted easily, and I often lose track. Having detailed agendas displayed on the screen helps me follow along better.
I especially like it for reading the slides without the video. Oftentimes, the slides for a presentation will be available but a video recording will not be, and having all the information on the slides makes it easier to learn from those presentations.
Of course, the "correct" way to do this would be with "speakers notes", but those seem to often be stripped off of archived presentations for whatever reason.
The timing is super important. Writing on a chalk/whiteboard or overhead takes time, which is required to absorb the content. Hitting the right timing and cues with this approach seems like it would take a lot of practice, which isn't a deal breaker, though I believe the 2 biggest problems with most presentations is too much/too fast content, and not enough practice and this approach might make those both harder, not easier.
This immediately reminded me of the "infinite" blackboards we had in some university lecture theatres such that you could just revolve the board surface and keep claiming new writing space (you could also write at a consistent level - no bending / stretching).
I thought you were talking about the lecture theaters where there were 6-8 giant boards arranged on the wall with pulley systems so the lecturer can raise/lower them and access them independently, kind of like in [0]. Some of the setups are have enough writable area that it's not even really practical to fill them all up in a 2-hour lecture period. Using the available space in a smart way is definitely a learned skill; it's far too easy to start in the "wrong" place and end up needing to write "board via"s / "goto"s.
Do companies still do whiteboard interviews anymore for engineers? Whiteboard management in that context was also a learnable skill, though easier than managing multiple movable boards.
When I was in college they would use a transparency projector, but instead of transparency pages, there would be a roll with a crank that you would turn to advanced the roll. You would get the same effect as slipshow.
I did an old experiment on a scrollable whiteboard with replay that I built after watching a khan academy style video and wanting to scroll to back to a formula without pausing the audio. This makes me want to dig it back ^^
Prezi lost me a PhD co-advisor, this person only liked traditional slide formats. In retrospect, this was a good thing to not have this person oy board. I used it pretty close to traditional slides, but they could not be made happy unless it was powerpoint... Separately, I did have a lot of fun making a Prezi to explain how GPUs worked for another class, which went over swimmingly for a different audience.
I ended up using reveal.js for my defense slides because the 2D slide grid allows you to go deep on a subject and keep the main flow clean.
The markdown to presentation approach is great. You can manage your slide (or slips) as code giving you history, offline collaboration, pull requests, etc. I don't think you can do that with most other presentation tools. I've used Marp [1] for traditional slides, and wrote a GitHub template repo that outputs the Marp HTML to GitHub Pages [2]. Similar workflows should be possible for Slipshow.
I see a huge markdown fan! I'm on the same page! We're building an entire ecosystem for markdown slides for the same reason.
The same design for all slides in the same workspace, a hosted version for non-developers, each slide has its own public url for easy slide playback, and more ...
Try if you are interested in slidepicker.com (beta)
I've wanted to love MARP for years but the documentation is so limited (and tutorials so sparse) that building a presentation with any complexity beyond the basics is almost impossible unless you have a solid understanding of CSS and YAML front matter.
It's a shame, because I think the idea of MARP is revolutionary, but in practice PowerPoint (or even free alternatives like Google Slides) is easier to use.
Thanks for the link, and the idea! Definitely a github action to automatically publish your Slipshow presentation on push would be a great workflow! (I'll open an issue for that!)
Also, Quarto to reveal.js is an amazing pipeline, and ties in well with the rest of the Quarto ecosystem meaning that you can reuse content from other mediums more easily.
I like it. Slides are the right approach for a lot of things but writing on blackboards and overheads had their own benefits that just scrolling a document doesn't really replicate.
As others have noted, you probably need to be cautious about just creating a wall of text but I can definitely see its uses.
> When using traditional slides, you are given a rectangle of white space to express your thought. When this rectangle is full, you have no other choice than erasing everything, and start again with a new white rectangle.
It's not entirely solving the issue though because you are animating everything all the time, you barely have much time to see the content
>> When using traditional slides, you are given a rectangle of white space to express your thought. When this rectangle is full, you have no other choice than erasing everything, and start again with a new white rectangle.
But if you scroll to far you have the same result and if you scroll less you may just use a slide where just move the bottom content to the top and add new content at the bottom.
I myself often still remember the position of the content even if I can't remember the content itself.
So I can skip through the slides and only watch certain parts of it without the need to read everything.
Readit News
Of course, the "correct" way to do this would be with "speakers notes", but those seem to often be stripped off of archived presentations for whatever reason.
I think math lectures often need quite some text support, they are the reason I created Slipshow.
Something like this: https://www.ragandbonebristol.com/curiosities-1/vintage-wils...
Sometimes, I used the analogy of a big papyrus roll (like this one: https://pgi-shop.de/en/papyrus-roll-20-x-80-double/) to explain what is Slipshow. But your analogy is much better!
Do companies still do whiteboard interviews anymore for engineers? Whiteboard management in that context was also a learnable skill, though easier than managing multiple movable boards.
[0] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-awesome-schools-like-MIT-UCs-an...
I did an old experiment on a scrollable whiteboard with replay that I built after watching a khan academy style video and wanting to scroll to back to a formula without pausing the audio. This makes me want to dig it back ^^
I ended up using reveal.js for my defense slides because the 2D slide grid allows you to go deep on a subject and keep the main flow clean.
[1] https://marp.app/
[2] https://github.com/ralexander-phi/marp-to-pages
The same design for all slides in the same workspace, a hosted version for non-developers, each slide has its own public url for easy slide playback, and more ...
Try if you are interested in slidepicker.com (beta)
It's a shame, because I think the idea of MARP is revolutionary, but in practice PowerPoint (or even free alternatives like Google Slides) is easier to use.
https://ia.net/presenter
Be sure to view page source.
As others have noted, you probably need to be cautious about just creating a wall of text but I can definitely see its uses.
> When using traditional slides, you are given a rectangle of white space to express your thought. When this rectangle is full, you have no other choice than erasing everything, and start again with a new white rectangle.
It's not entirely solving the issue though because you are animating everything all the time, you barely have much time to see the content
But if you scroll to far you have the same result and if you scroll less you may just use a slide where just move the bottom content to the top and add new content at the bottom.
I myself often still remember the position of the content even if I can't remember the content itself. So I can skip through the slides and only watch certain parts of it without the need to read everything.
That would be harder with that approach.