PowerPoint Is Evil - In Class.

I agree with Edward Tufte. PowerPoint is speech-making made easy and can be very useful for presentations of information and ideas. However, it is greatly overused. I hate it when people have a PowerPoint presentation and just read everything off of the slides verbatim, without adding anything else of substance. PowerPoint slides should be an outline of what someone wants to say, not a script for his every thought. If I wanted to hear someone read, I would ask them to read me a story or something. Otherwise, I'm quite capable of reading for myself.

I think PowerPoint can take away a speaker's ability to really talk in front of people. If you really need PowerPoint to hold your hand along every step of the way, you probably shouldn't be giving a speech in the first place. Again, if PowerPoint is just being used as an outline, I don't think it's a big deal; don't let the white screen on the wall do all of your talking for you.

I do think that the use of PowerPoint with elementary children should be sparse. When children are still developing, they need the extra steps and examples so they know how to write in complete sentences and form complete thoughts - not create formulated lists of information.