Edward Tufte makes so many excellent points that I agree with 100% about powerpoint presentations. Last year in my college writing II course at my other college, I had to create a powerpoint that discussed what I wanted to find in my research paper, but it had to be simple and easy for anyone to understand. My topic was over sexism and racism in Disney films. We had to have at least 4 pictures in our 6-slide presentation. Oh, god, I wanted to stab myself when I had to create this... this thing. I thought it was a waste of time- in the classroom and outside of it, too. I could have easily listened to all 20-some other students talk about their ideas for 1 minute instead of watching horribly made, monotonous powerpoint presentations that took 4-5 minutes to show.
Granted, some people need to see information in front of them, such as graphs, charts, or in some cases, words if they are visual learners and that is where powerpoints can help students, teachers, clients, and coworkers out, but any other time, when a person is using a powerpoint just to make their idea "pretty" it is a waste of time. Like Tufte says, "Often, the more intense the detail, the greater the clarity and understanding" but teachers like to put the bare minimum on their slides to make it easier for themselves and the audience.
>>horribly made, monotonous powerpoint presentations that took 4-5 minutes to show<<
ReplyDeleteYikes - sounds excruciating. I didn't use Power Point until 2008, largely because of experiences like this. I think it CAN be useful, and visual learners tend to gravitate towards it. But the preponderance of people (esp. lazy students) tend to phone in their slides.
And, as you no doubt noticed, some teachers include power point assignments simply because, as writing instructors, we are expected to these days. However, not all teachers even know what constitutes a good PP presentation...
I'm surprised that you were required to take CW II again. Hopefully, this course is still proving at least somewhat useful/interesting...