I gave a talk on Search Engine Optimization and Content Management Systems at Lebanon College yesterday. Yeah, I know, the topic was a little too broad for an hour’s lecture. But it was a decent overview. 
greendalek said that it got his students excited and engaged for the rest of the class, so I think I did okay. I’m glad I brought my computer, though. I’d brought the Powerpoint presentation on a memory stick, and I found that the software on the drive interfered with the computer at the school seeing the files on the drive, confound it. So we just plugged my netbook into the projector and I did the lecture from that.
If anyone was wondering about Powerpoint presentations and netbooks, I can say that mine (minimal animation, no animated media and no sound) did just fine for the talk. I think I want a wireless slide advance thingie (how’s that for a technical term?) for the next time I do a lecture. I prefer to stand in the front of the class.
It makes me more comfortable for the social networking class. Most of the teach I’ve done has been exercise-based. While I’ll have several exercises in the class, it’s going to be mostly lecture-based, and I was wondering how I’d do for lecturing without talking people through physical exercises.
It’s funny how perspective can change. I used to marvel at people who could speak “spontaneously” and fluidly on topics. I ran across a comment once in Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein that sounding spontaneous is often a matter of careful preparation. That’s so true. I kept track of how long I spent prepping for that talk. I spent just shy of eight hours for a one hour talk — and that was on a subject I knew pretty well. Now, if I give the talk again, it’s unlikely that I’ll spend more than an hour and a half or so reviewing and tweaking.
Still, it was fun. I find that I almost always learn more about a subject just from researching for lectures. *chuckles* and looking at this pile of books on various elements of social networking and online interaction at my elbow, I expect I’ll experience the same thing in my class come January.