iPad for Presentation via Flickr through CC by cplong11
At the beginning of July, I participated in the Hermeneutics Colloquium at the University of Freiburg.
For the conference, I had written a paper, but I brought neither paper, nor books, nor physical copies of articles of any kind. Rather, I relied on my iPad and MacBook Air while in Europe. Together they weighed much less than even one or two books and a folder with a physical copy of my 45-minute paper.
What they offered me, however, was access to a wide set of resources upon which I drew both in the days leading up to the delivery of the paper and, in the hours prior to my reading of the paper, I was able to quickly integrate references from presentations earlier in the same day directly into the text I read.
This required, I will admit, wireless internet access, which was somewhat difficult to come by in Germany, because I was renting an apartment without WiFi. Still, wireless access was available to me through the University of Freiburg, and that allowed me to be much more flexible in the delivery of the paper than I might otherwise have been.
The Dedicated Reading Copy
Last December, I read a very helpful article on the ProfHacker blog about preparing a Dedicated Reading Copy (DRC) for presentations in academic venues. I have since integrated some of the advice given there into my standard practice for presentations. Let me talk about the process and identify the value the iPad adds to it.
Because the paper I gave is part of a larger book project on which I am working, I wrote the paper as if it were a chapter of the book. This meant, however, that it needed significant revisions and truncation for delivery as a 45-minute paper. Once the draft of the chapter was complete, I edited the DRC with an ear for the audience to which the paper would be given. (It is not surprising that editing the document with the audience in mind led to the inclusion of material that in fact enriched the chapter of the book.)
Preparing the DRC, however, requires more than simply revising the content of the paper. It also includes adding notes to myself (usually in red) about how to read a certain portion of the text. Sometimes I tell myself [SLOW DOWN HERE] or [PAUSE FOR EMPHASIS]; sometimes it involves prompting some extemporaneous comment, the theme of which I note, but don’t write out. These notes make the delivery of the paper more dynamic, but to prepare them requires thinking in concrete terms about how the paper will be heard and even a bit of rehearsing. Ultimately it is the rehearsing that makes the presentation stronger.
The Role of the iPad
The iPad offers me some important affordances with regard to the DRC. First, it gives me color, so I can mark my notes to myself in a color that makes them easy to distinguish from the text itself. Sometimes I even use multiple colors for different kinds of notes if necessary. More importantly, however, is the fact that the font can be enlarged easily to make the text itself easier to see when reading from a lectern. Finally, reading from the iPad allows me to easily scroll through the text with a finger and, because the iPad is tilted slightly toward me, it is easier to transition between the text and looking up at the audience. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the iPad is less obtrusive than a laptop because it does not position the screen as a barrier between people. This is particularly important in the context of a presentation when the distance between the speaker and the audience can be difficult to traverse.
There are some limitations with the iPad as well. In order to have the scrolling feature, I call up a version of the document in Word from Dropbox as opposed to reading from a PDF version. I use GoodReader as the program from which to read the document, and I have not found a way to make GoodReader allow me to scroll up and down a pdf document as opposed to swiping between pages. It does this with Word, but not with a pdf file (at least as far as I can tell). What I lose with Word, though, are the footnotes and page numbers. Because of this, I have used Pages on the iPad to present papers written in Word. Doing this adds the value of allowing me to edit text on the iPad itself as I go or immediately prior to delivering a paper. However, Pages often has a tough time with the Greek characters I frequently use.
During the question and answer period, I often like to jot a thought or two as the question is being asked. If I use the iPad to do this, say with Evernote, it is nice because I have those notes automatically saved for later. However, it is difficult to switch back and forth between the notes and the paper in a dynamic way during the question and answer period.
Even with these limitations, though, the iPad is an excellent device from which to deliver a paper.
One final anecdote from my conference in July underscores this. The paper immediately before mine made a number of points that connected to my paper. I was able to edit the DRC very quickly in the break between our papers, add notes in color about when to mention the connection between our papers, and sync it seamlessly through Dropbox to the iPad. The DRC then had all those comments integrated into the paper itself. This made the paper more relevant to the actual discussion we were having in the conference itself.
