[Okular-devel] [okular] [Bug 293109] Enable form filling in presentation mode

[reescf at gmail.com]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=293109

--- Comment #7 from reescf at gmail.com ---
Basically, I use form fields to write up the results of class discussion. So,
for example, I might have a regular slide with some information followed by a
slide with a question for discussion and a form box. Until the students discuss
it and respond, I don't know what should go in that box. But it is still part
of the presentation and belongs on a slide - it is not supposed to be like the
page of a form which you scroll through. And then the next slide might have a
block defining a related concept and an example with an image or something. And
then the next one might be a diagram followed by a slide with another form
field where I can jot notes in response to students' comments and questions
about that week's reading.

It is just a method to make the presentation less passive and more interactive
and to be more responsive to questions and comments which a particular group of
students generate. So although the slides all exist in advance and although the
content of many of them is fixed (just as it would be in a powerpoint-type
slide set), the content of some of them is only decided as we work through the
slides and depends very much on the actual concerns of the students in that
particular class. So if I give the same presentation to two groups of students,
I'll end up with two different sets of slides. That is, each will have the same
number of slides and the slides will be structured in the same way but the
content of some of those slides will differ because I'll get different input
from the students.

One of the problems with powerpoint-type presentations is passivity: why bother
answering a question if you know the answer is on the next slide? That can be
avoided if the answer is not (yet) on the next slide just as, if you were using
a traditional blackboard, the answer would not (yet) be chalked up. It also
undermines the idea that discussion and student input isn't important: if only
what I write in advance gets beamed up in full colour, there is a tendency to
think that must be the most important stuff. What people then merely ask or say
in class looks less important. But forms let me put that stuff up as well thus
reflecting its value.

It is the interactivity which is important. Form-filling is a way to achieve
that interactivity. The reason I do it that way is because the LaTeX beamer
package includes commands which allow you to use elements of forms within
slides. Since that's what I use to produce my presentations, that's the
mechanism I use for building in interactivity. I don't know if that was the
intended purpose of that functionality in beamer or if it was originally
intended for something else but either way it makes it very easy to create
interactive presentations which encourage active participation in class.

Of course, I don't always use this - if I'm giving a professional presentation,
I just use "regular" slides. But for teaching purposes, the possibility of
building in interactivity is a really big advantage of using beamer. And it
works much better when it is part of a regular slide than when people try to
just make documents full screen which always looks messy and tends to be
distracting for the audience. Beamer's ability to build it into proper slides
is really slick and very nice but it does require a pdf viewer which lets you
fill in a form while in presentation mode.

Does this make any more sense? I feel like I'm going to have to invite you to
class (!) as I'm obviously not doing a very good job of explaining this, for
which I apologise.

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