You used to scrawl me achievement1/2/2024 Since I began to use PowerPoint, I have noticed a significant improvement in the organization and quality of student notes, which I always ask to see when someone comes to me in need of assistance. At various points I use a slide to remind them of where we are and how the specific information I am providing fits into the general theme or topic. My first is to enable students to follow me easily as I move through the lecture, which I outline at the start and end of class. In practice, I employ PowerPoint to accomplish four basic aims. Do not conflate education with entertainment. Avoid the colorful graphics and "bells and whistles" that delight software designers but often clutter multimedia presentations and confuse the intended audience. Fewer images, carefully selected, will motivate rather than distract students. Limit the text to the lecture outline and key terms, events, or names, illustrated if possible. It will also mean more focus on you rather than the screen. Fewer words will mean more note-taking and less copying. Prepare the lesson first-then look for complementary images or graphics to display with it. Do not substitute a slideshow for a lecture. Presentation programs like PowerPoint should supplement-not supplant-the lecture or lesson you already use. Here are my three "Principles of PowerPoint": I can only share what has worked for me and might work for you, assuming that you have not already discovered these rather basic ideas yourself. So how can we use PowerPoint effectively? I have no magic answers or solutions. But in the end, PowerPoint remains only a tool-and a good carpenter should never blame his or her tools. Used poorly, it can distract or confuse them. Used well, the program can help motivate students, improve their retention, and organize their notes. What too many critics of PowerPoint too often fail to bear in mind is that it is simply a tool-nothing more and nothing less. But traditional lectures with chalkboard scrawl are often little better. Technological innovation can stifle rather than stimulate human interaction. It can certainly inhibit rather than encourage critical thinking. PowerPoint no doubt can have negative effects. As the bullet points multiply and the text slides move to the inevitable conclusion, the speaker becomes disengaged and the audience becomes disconnected. Professors present complicated and controversial interpretations as simple and accepted facts, with no room for alternative ideas or outcomes. ![]() Students absorb information reflexively rather than think critically. PowerPoint, we are told, is the "spawn of Satan." 2 It encourages passivity and inhibits spontaneity. 1 His focus is mainly on the program's templates, which, he contends, erode verbal, visual, and statistical analysis. In The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, he offers a sophisticated and nuanced critique. In academic circles, perhaps the most influential and respected critic is Yale Professor Edward Tufte. Detractors see it as an insidious force responsible for everything from the decline in educational achievement to the collapse of Western civilization. Some advocates even hail it as a new form of cultural communication.īut criticism of PowerPoint is also ubiquitous. In a remarkably brief time, it has become a universal phenomenon (and even lent its name to many other presentation programs). The software program is virtually impossible to avoid, whether in classrooms or conference rooms, board rooms or briefing rooms.
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