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.

My friend and colleague, Barbara Sawhill, has written a great post about the problems of presentations, both live and streaming, in terms of audience participation.  The irony of these presentations is that they are often about creating an interactive classroom environment, offline or online, and yet, they don’t create an interactive environment themselves.  As Barbara points out, we do that in all our sessions.  It’s often a bit unnerving for the audience at first, but then, it seems, they take off and we all learn a lot, which to me is the whole point.  A while back on his blog, George Siemens talked about trying to facilitate a conversation rather than give a presentation and his audience got mad at him.  They wanted slides, dammit!  When you think about it, this is often what happens to students who find themselves suddenly required to participate actively in their own learning.  What do you mean I have to contribute to a blog and say what I think?  What do you mean we’re going to collaboratively write a paper?  Just as we push our audiences past their expectations, we have to do the same with our students.  Too often, we become complacent and just spoon feed them or have a “sink or swim” philosophy.  Coming up with ways to create interactivity looks easy on the surface, but it’s actually harder than preparing lecture notes or slides.  And once you’re in the room, your audience may go off script.  So you have to be able to think on your feet in a way that you don’t when giving a standard presentation or standard lecture.

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