Tufte raises some eyebrows with his views and stand on power point and it being used as a leading medium of instruction. Some views he presented were the stagnant nature of presentation, and its inability to captivate the viewer. It’s very important to understand what Power Point wishes to accomplish and what it doesn’t include in its spectrum.
PowerPoint was never designed to be an audio/visual delight with intensive graphics and eye-catching presentation. Its very purpose was to objectively list data with some pictorial presence mainly used as a static presentation and not an mpeg file. To add some color, think of a projector (the machines used to put up information by means of a transparent sheet reflecting information with the help of a light bulb) that we all have seen in some class that is not only hard to read but is in fact, so dry that we might never really have even looked at it with much interest. Now compare this to the Power Point presentations that do lack some modern graphic marvels, but display and present the information in a much better format and style.
So, while looking at any form/medium of presentation/technology, we must first think about what the objective of this medium is. Yes, the objective in many cases is fluid and does evolve over time but the concrete purpose does not. Would we rather the Professors just scribble some bullet points on the whiteboard and spend all our time trying to decipher the text, and infinitely worse, copy it word for word. I think having an electronic medium makes for better learning as it easier to distribute and follows a proper layout and system.
It is up to the author of presentations to be as creative as possible in his or her efforts to catch the eye of the audience. I’m not Power Point’s most loyal fan, but since my exposure with finance has been heavy, I have lived and breathed MS Excel and PP during my stints and assure you that is perhaps the most effective tool when some but not all information needs to be communicated. The purpose of this tool was never to be content heavy, but outline heavy. Perhaps, that is what our PP editors and neglecting.
Just a thought!
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2 comments:
I just wrote a nice long comment...then accidentally close this little box and deleted it all...so this one will be shorter out of frustration.
I don't think Tufte is arguing that PowerPoint is a useless or faulty program, only that it's users have made it that way. The mediocre presenter loses focus on the simple and useful aspect of PowerPoint and tries to convey something more through their "spiffy" animations, sounds, fonts, and information. Instead of a simple visual aide, it becomes a tool for destroying presentations.
People use the program and read it bullet by bullet, or think they have to write as much as possible in every slide and start using annotations and abbreviations that lose the effectiveness of the original thought. PowerPoint has good intentions, but like you said, it's use evolves and has become useless because of our generations lacking.
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