Teach Naked?

Jose Bowen makes a case for "teaching naked" - meaning, teaching without technology in the classroom.  He advocates using technology like video podcasts to deliver lectures outside of class time so that students and professors can instead use those valuable minutes for discussion and engagement. If that's too much to ask, Mr. Bowen says, at least ditch the PowerPoint presentations, which turn both teachers and students into zombies.

It's clear Mr. Bowen can come up with an eye-catching title, but what do you think of his ideas? He has a point about the snooze factor of slideshow presentations - it is infinitely frustrating watching a slideshow lecture that you could've gone through more productively if the professor had just emailed it to you. And yet, there are times when I've found slideshow presentations worked very well - particularly for looking at passages of poetry together, or for considering a visual representation of a literary idea. Likewise, I think he has a point that as online education becomes more common, the main asset that brick-and-mortar universities have to offer is the opportunity for face-to-face interaction; the more we can actually work with professors and other students, the better our experience, and the more we learn...