PowerPoint in education. Oxymoron?
We may have slipped into accepting the output of student work with 20 bullets per slide? Why do we allow students to think and speak in bullets? Maybe because they watch their teachers do the same? A friend teaches at an elementary school in Germantown Wisconsin where students learn PowerPoint in 4th grade. Are we hoping little Timmy will become a successful insurance salesmen?
Another misuse of a digital tool.
Ever stop to think why we have so many visually offensive websites cluttering our internet? Teaching students color theory is just as important as teaching them CSS. The world has changed, and the internet has fueled (good or bad) this change. With the over abundance of computers in elementary schools we now understand that PowerPoint reduces verbal communication and misleads analysis.
Many students pass basic communication by using PowerPoint as a crutch.
Please read this essay by Edward Tufte before it’s too late.
I caught myself in this mess. Now I deliver bullet free presentations and the feedback is stronger than ever before…and no more than six words per slide.
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4 replies on “Slideware (PowerPoint) corruption”
So is a flash presentation better? is it really powerpoint that is the culprit or it is bullet points that are the problem? Does powerpoint lock us into a paradigm that it is difficult to escape from, thus making it bad? Or are we the ones limiting our own use of powerpoint?
I believe the tool is not the determining factor. The subject matter and the speaker (subject matter expert) really determine the impact of the presentation.
Too many times I have watched (including myself) prezos that rely upon the tool to make the impact rather than the speaker’s message however stated in bullets.
PowerPoint has, like Microsoft’s Word application locked us into a specific tool that is misused from the elementary school room to the corporate boardroom. There are probably better tools available, but just like MS Word…if it does not import/export the .ppt format, well then nobody wants to manually migrate their growing collections to a tool that may not be around in two years.
Flash is the truly the best meta-tool for today’s students. It can be used for a website animation introduction, video playback, game controller and even a tool to talk to the enterprise database via ColdFusion.
Strong presentations are best delivered with powerful content that directly impacts the audience…and I would leave the visual effects from PowerPoint, Keynote and Flash to a minimum as not to distract from the subject matter’s message.
Maybe there should be a class, or at least a seminar or something, to teach the students about quality presentation design. I’ve seen some less than spectacular presentations during my tour at MIAD and I’m sure mine could use some help as well. Get Tufte to come speak!
Phil and I have been requiring students to present some material in PowerPoint form, so a workshop would be great for CD jrs and srs. Tufte would be spectacular but probably too expensive. Since we teach information design in the fall, that would be the best time to schedule a visitor.