Great Edward Tufte rant about PowerPoint and other slideware, and why we should all avoid it. I did a talk a couple months ago and the conference organizers nearly insisted that I bring a PowerPoint presentation to accompany my speech. I told them that I didn't believe in slides for the kind of talk I was giving, and they responded, "But what will keep the audience from getting bored?" Urr, possibly the words coming out of my mouth?
Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something.
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I guess the teachers are just trying to teach kids to use the tools they will be expected to use when they get to the real world. My daughter thinks it is fun and enjoys it. It also gets them thinking more about how to express themselves using a computer. To me the real problem is that most presentations suck and PP doesn't change that, it just makes them look more professional. I don't think the tool is as bad as it's users and perhaps even the audience.
7:26:08 AM 
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