Powerpoint

I both agree and disagree with Tufte because Powerpoint can be both good and bad. I think that Powerpoint presentations can be used correctly, in correct settings to add to a lecture or project. I am very slow at taking notes and understanding material; if my professors did not put much of their lecture on slides for the class, I might not be able to follow at all. However, Tufte makes a very good point in saying that:

Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. (...) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days (...).

I sat in on a friend's writing class at Akron U my junior year of high school. The day I went, the students were presenting short research projects of idealistic vacations. These students did worse on these projects than the videos fellow students and I were making for our Applied Communications course at my high school. The slides had very little material and no citations. However, the students did include a lot of photos, and even some effects between slides. I was astonished at how little effort was actually put into the projects and I think that this level of work is what Tufte is afraid of.