talklets

Talkets: A New Way to Teach

After giving an online course for five years that was comprised of indexed videos of me lecturing combined with still images of the slides, I felt that something better was needed. The main problem with the video-taped lectures is that they cannot be easily updated. Also, the video quality is not high enough to show the pointer on the slides.

The solution came to me slowly and even now the final word is still not in. The basic idea is to convert a 2 hour lecture into 6 concepts and then present each concept by approximately 10 two-minute animations or talklets, which show the mouse moving over the animated images as I explain them. It is a bit like me sitting behind you and guiding the mouse as I explain a very animated PowerPoint slide to you.

Well, three months and 550 talklets later, I am still unsure about their value. I plan to make some talklets that help the novice use Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Acrobat but until then I illustrate the concept with some talklets from my class. To see these samples click here.

Feedback to me at michael.levitt@stanford.edu will be very welcome.