So...
A couple of years ago I started recording my lectures - before the university provided this service for us - using my laptop and a software program (for the mac) called "ProfCast." ProfCast is a wonderful utility for this purpose because it not only records your voice but it records the *timing* of your slide changes in Powerpoint (or Keynote, the Mac iWork replacement, that I use).
Once the lecture is over, you stop the program and it blends the audio with images from the slides in a file called an "enhanced podcast." That means that if you have Quicktime, or a video-enabled iPod, you hear the audio and you see the slides change at the same time.
For the students, it also provides "chapter markers" (like the chapters in a DVD) so they can skip ahead or back to find the part that they want to review, using the slides as a visual cue.
The oddest thing happened, though, when I reviewed these recordings. I didn't want to listen to my whole lecture, just make sure that it was audible from beginning to end. So, I started the playback and then skipped from chapter to chapter. An unnerving pattern emerged: I started practically every single "slide" with the word "So,..." Listening to the whole lecture, skipping from slide to slide, sounded like this: "So,...,So,...So,..." etc. I thought I had some sort of weird mannerism.
Today, however, Quirks and Quarks' Bob Macdonald took on this very question, and here is the result:
Whew. Other people do it too, I guess. And, there is a reasonable explanation. But I am still going to try to cut down on all the "so-so" in my lectures!
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