Emerging Technologies Consulting

The New York times discusses the military’s use (and sometimes overuse) of PowerPoint.   I’ve used PowerPoint plenty of times myself, but I try to avoid it whenever possible.  Most of my classes are discussion-oriented and surprisingly non-technology-infused.  Behind the use of PowerPoint in many classes is the desire to simplify information.  And many professors use them so that students have something to look at during class and/or to have good notes for review after class.  But some issues are just too complicated to be reduced to bullet points and I’d rather have a discussion about those complex issues and hear what students have to say.  And if students simply download the slides or copy down the bullet points, are they really learning to take notes, much less retain that information?  I’m not so sure.  But PowerPoint can be used effectively to illustrate a point by using a graph or an image.  But you don’t have to use PowerPoint for that, though it does make organizing those illustrations easier.  You could organize them on a wiki or a blog or other web site.  You could bookmark things in delicious and have that list of links handy during class.

When I give talks and use PowerPoint (or something similar), there are two ways I use it.  One, I use it to display images that reinforce my point or that create a tension with my point, the idea being to stimulate interesting thoughts as I’m talking.  Two, I use it for organizing what I’m going to say.  While I do have bullet points, they are there to remind me what to say.  So they’re more for me than they are for my audience, though I do also think of them when I jot those bullet points down.  I’ve seen people use PowerPoint in amazingly wonderful ways.  And I’ve been to talks with zero slides that have been amazing (many of the TED talks have few if any slides).  And I’ve seen PowerPoint presentations where the presenter read the bullets and nearly killed us all.  And I’ve seen talks without slides where slide would have been good, and have even seen one such talk where the person apologized for not having graphic, suddenly realizing that we would grasp his ideas better if we had a visual.

So PowerPoint’s not all bad, but like any technology, it’s not going to instantly solve all your problems.  It can’t make a bad presentation suddenly good.  Good presentations are more than the slides.  They take thought and practice and real consideration for how best to get ideas across.