Matthew Wright 👨🏼‍🦼
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mcmwright.bsky.social
Matthew Wright 👨🏼‍🦼
@mcmwright.bsky.social
Acoustics, Folk Music, Disability, not necessarily at the same time. OHMI trustee.
So sorry
November 15, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Will there still be room for a fainting couch?
November 15, 2025 at 7:54 PM
A leadership contender could run on "Only I will deliver the broken promises and tax rises our supporters are crying out for"
November 14, 2025 at 9:07 AM
Its actually Hand, Foot and Mouth, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes
November 14, 2025 at 8:44 AM
I do admit that I once gave a seminar with a deck of 140 slides, of which fewer than twenty had any words on them, but that was a one-off case. Anyway, the defence (of PowerPoint) rests
November 13, 2025 at 7:42 PM
"Ah but if you say what's written your audience has to choose whether to follow their ears or their eyes"

Maybe, but a, good proportion of *my* audience lack confidence in English (IELTS scores be blowed) and wish I came with closed captions - there they are
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
A few academics reported that they'd tried putting a paragraph break between sentences on eg assignment instructions and sure 'nuff, comprehension went up and questions and misunderstandings went down

My bullet points are the sentences in such an exposition
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
David Allen Green used to get stick on twitter for his legalistic writing style, where each sentence is a separate paragraph, but as he pointed out it's very effective.
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
If students could readily learn the things I try to teach them from written documents with paragraphs of text they wouldn't need my lectures, they could just read books.
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
What about those words though? Yes, I know what Tufte and Feynman said about bullet points

But
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Plus, if I spot an error while lecturing (all too common, not helped by rewriting my materials each AY) I want to correct it there and then so the students can access it on the shared drive straight away. I don't have time to edit and recompile LaTeX and I might not remember later
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
I might get marginally better maths with Beamer but adjusting the graphics till layout's the way I want it is a nightmare
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
That's not just a stylistic choice, it's one of the NCTQ's Six Fundamental Teaching Strategies and the evidence for the benefits of dual coding is good, as evidence for educational things goes

www.nctq.org/research-ins...
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
First of all, I want almost all my slides to contain words (with inline maths set properly) and pictures or diagrams that relate to them
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
My use case is making slides for lectures, for which (bearing in mind I can't write as I go) I find it the least worst tool. Why?
November 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
I've no illusions about Microsoft as an organisation and if LibreEquation let me do the same I'd switch in a flash, but it doesn't
November 13, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Then I copy and paste it onto the next-but-one line, and then cut and paste blocks to "take them over the other side" etc until I get where I want to be or, more often, realise I can't
November 13, 2025 at 4:12 PM
When I want to do some maths I open a blank PowerPoint document, switch the layout to 'title and content', delete the bullet point so the equation centres and write my equation
November 13, 2025 at 4:12 PM
I remember mentioning this to a GP who asked if there wasn't a computer programme I could use instead. At the time I thought, sceptically, that Mathematica might be it but it turned out to be Microsoft Equation Editor
November 13, 2025 at 4:12 PM