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Wired 11.09: PowerPoint Is Evil (p)(f)

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Groups (3)

  • cis054

    cis054

    1 members,38 bookmarks

    I use this group for my online course

  • docsnetwork

    Doc's Network

    1 members,45 bookmarks

    This is the Diigo group for friends of Matt Warren. Items up for discussion are MMOFPS's, communication, culture, history, geopolitics, and humorous kittens.

  • techinclass

    Instructional Technology

    22 members,42 bookmarks

    This group is a lists of websites that I and my group feel could a) help teachers b)help students to learn and c)by the way use technology in the process!

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Saved by 54 people (20 private), first by anonymouse user on 2006-06-28


Public Sticky notes

Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience.

Highlighted by marrinerh

Yet slideware -computer programs for presentations -is everywhere: in corporate America, in government bureaucracies, even in our schools. Several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint are churning out trillions of slides each year. Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.

Highlighted by lampertina

PowerPoint's pushy style seeks to set up a speaker's dominance over the audience. The speaker, after all, is making power points with bullets to followers. Could any metaphor be worse? Voicemail menu systems? Billboards? Television? Stalin?

Highlighted by lampertina

Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials.

Highlighted by lampertina

They are uncomparative, indifferent to content and evidence, and so data-starved as to be almost pointless. Chartjunk is a clear sign of statistical stupidity.

Highlighted by lampertina

Presentations largely stand or fall on the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content. If your numbers are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won't make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.

Highlighted by lampertina

PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector. But rather than supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it. Such misuse ignores the most important rule of speaking: Respect your audience.

Highlighted by lampertina

Power Corrupts.
PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.

Highlighted by mr_maher

The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.

Highlighted by bbgsue

Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something.

Highlighted by bbgsue