How do you make your CS lectures more interesting? My biggest challenge each semester is keeping students engaged in class. It's obvious that most of them would rather be somewhere else. I don't know if it's the students, my lecture, or both. I wish I had the resources to present a lecture this way. I believe that generating interest is just as important as the content itself, because this builds a passion for CS that will fuel future learning. How do you make your CS lectures more interesting?
Kill 'em with clarity.  

I have a working memory that borders on handicapped, which has forced me into a solution that I have not seen others do.  This is going to sound like total anti-orthodoxy, but I actually focus very heavily on my Powerpoints to keep things moving and breezy, and it really can work!  Fair warning, though: doing this well takes a tremendous number of hours to pull off.  It is not unusual for me to throw 2-4 hours into making a single slide.

I started with TED's powerpoint recommendations.  Many of the top talks there utilize PowerPoints, but take a look at those slides and you'll see something funny: there is virtually no text at all.  The 7x7 rule (no more than 7 lines of text, no more than 7 words per line) doesn't make for interesting slides.  I aim for no more than 5 words altogether, and 0 words is even better.  (I don't always attain this, but that's the goal.)

My slides consist almost exclusively of graphics and figures for discussion.  The graphics are often heavily animated.  Very little of the animation is aimed at being cute or funny.  The huge majority is designed to make sure that the concepts are extremely clear.  So, I might construct a graph in small segments based on the order in which I wish to discuss the parts.

For instance, when I talk about how two dimensional arrays are stored in memory, I begin with a graphical representation of how I suspect my students typically imagine it, and then have pieces fly out or fade in, slowly replacing the fictitious model with the correct systems one at a time, giving me a chance to talk about each new element.

The other thing I build into the slides is the activities I want the kids to do.  "Try this exercise!"  "Look at this prompt and work with a partner."  "First one to write the correct answer on the board wins!"  This was at first a nod to my terrible memory, but it has actually helped the pacing in my classroom as well.

The whole enterprise is very highly choreographed, and after every lecture I give, I make notes on any place where kids seemed to fall off.  If it slowed down or became unclear at any point, I rework that section, often very thoroughly.

There are still limits, and it is still lecture.  After about 30 minutes, kids will still start to very seriously drift if they don't have other things to do. However, the feedback I have received about clarity has been very consistent.

One addition I intend to make this year is pre-made notes for every lecture with blanks for them to fill in as we go, and integrated exercises that they can work on at various times throughout the lesson.  (Again, this is all highly choreographed.)

What I like about the system is that, as I hone it over the years, it really does get more and more effective.  It also provides me with a nice set of resources that I can share if students need to review material.