PowerPoint Woes

I doubt many of us in this class are going to completely disagree with Tufte's views on PP. We all despise the endless amounts of slides when we're in a lecture. I've always found a presentation without PowerPoint much more...enthralling if that is at all possible.

But his attacks are more at how PP allows people to give a bad presentation. That if used by the medial presenter it becomes the cliche PP presentation of blandness and generalizations. I really liked his analysis of the NASA slide. This just really illustrated what I have always thought about PP. The "very big bullet". The misleading title. The limited amount of information. It really shows how within the confines of PP a presentation becomes faulty. Users feel like they have an outline to follow. Each slide must have a point, as illustrated by each title, and then broken down into bullets of information. With the limited space, users feel obligated to squeeze in as much as possible, which leads to "phrase fragments". Instead of standing in front of the class and speaking continuously and elaborately, people spell it out slowly as to prove each significant point; Bullet by bullet to prove that they have come to some kind of decision. Like in the NASA presentation. Instead of just speaking about the incident and analysis, the presenters crammed information into slides and generalized a conclusion without much elaboration. When giving a presentation one should never be reading something, unless it's a verbatim quoting. With the way people tend to use PP, what they could do is just stand at the front of the class not talking, just clicking a mouse, and have the audience copy the slides.

But this isn't because that's all the can be done with PP. Personally I don't mind using PP when giving a speech or presentation, but I don't use it much. If used correctly, it should be like the slides aren't really even there. The presenter should be informed and knowledgeable enough to speak without them. The only reason I seem to use PP is because I'm required to do so according to class. The slides become a visual organization of information for the audience. Not a guideline of your presentation. The presentation comes from your head, and shouldn't be a bulleted speech. Even putting general ideas, reading them one by one, and elaborating is a PP presentation fault...it's boring. Sometimes, I put information on the slides that I don't say or talk about, just a way to get out more information than I have time to say. I think powerpoint presentations tend to make the presenter focus on reading an abbreviated, animated, illustrated essay instead of just talking about what they know.