41–50 of 215 posts
I'm also not of the opinion that slides are ever necessary. I'd rather just watch a talk recording with the guy explaining what I see in the slides. Usually slides for any talk I give are comical or non-sensical in nature.
The interest I had in the topic at the beginning of the semester was nearly crushed entirely.
This is like saying food makes us fat, ban food! Nonsensical
For one, food is essential for our survival. Powerpoint is not. So while banning food would be nonsensical (for that reason), banning Powerpoint doesn't have the same issue.
A better example would be: "French fries make us fat, ban french fries".
Not as nonsensical. French fries are not essential to eat in the first place, and cause harm according to most studies.
Slide 1
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| Programmer |
| and |
| Manager |
| Kidnapped |
| by |
| Terrorists |
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Slide 2
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| |
| Company |
| Refused |
| to pay |
| Ransom |
| |
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Slide 3
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| |
| Death |
| Sentence |
| Imposed |
| |
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Slide 4
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| |
| Last |
| Wish |
| Granted |
| |
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Slide 5
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| Manager's |
| Last Wish: |
| To Give Final |
| 89 Slide |
| Powerpoint |
| Presentation |
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Slide 6
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| Programmer's |
| Last Wish: |
| |
| "Kill Me |
| First" |
------------------People who currently use powerpoint to be ineffective will find other ways to be ineffective without it. People also write terrible emails and create horrible documents. Ridiculous books are written. Zero-content instant messages are sent. Some people don't get how to use the phone. Shall we discard them all?
I think perhaps instead of saying "powerpoint should be banned" perhaps poorly built diagrams and powerpoint slides with too much data that are meant to be read should be banned. Slides and visuals as part of a presentation are used to focus the listener visually on the main point being discussed. People are (generally) visually oriented and enhancing a presentation with visuals using slides can make your presentatio…
PowerPoint should be banned because its interface encourages the creator to add distractions. It has almost no tools for making things simpler.
One of the slides in the WP story credits Edward Tufte, who has written and published an essay on the subject, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within" [1]. This, along with his seminal text "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" [2] are great reads, and I think should be required reading for anyone who has to present anything, technical or otherwise. [1] http://www.edwardtufte.com/…
1) a reference books like an almanac averages 150 characters per square inch; a printed power point slide 7 characters per square inch (page 22): the visual brain starves for stimulation during a poor PP presentation.
2) Tufte recommends high resolution handouts accompany PP image slides. Eschew low content slides.
"Avoid elaborate hierarchies of bullet lists. Never read aloud from slides. Never use PP templates to format paper reports or web screens. Use PP as a projector for showing low-resolution color images, graphics, and videos that cannot be reproduced as printed handouts at a presentation."
"Paper handouts at a talk can effectively show text, numbers, data graphics, images. Printed materials, which should largely replace PP, bring information transfer rates in presentations up to that of everyday material in newspapers, magazines, books, and internet screens. A useful paper size for handouts at presentations is 11 by 17 inches (28 by 43 cm), folded in half to make 4 pages. This piece of paper can show images with a resolution of 1,200 dpi and up to 60,000 characters of words and numbers, the content-equivalent of 50 to 250 typical PP slides of text and data. Thoughtfully planned handouts at your talk tell the audience that you are serious and precise; that you seek to leave traces and have consequences. And that you respect your audience."
Power Point is ubiquitous because it offers improved communications. Just because some journalist isn't old enough to remember slides and overhead projectors doesn't mean such things didn't exist. If there's a shortcoming with Power Point it's that it is based on the idea of printing everything out rather than dynamic interaction. It's an old paradigm, but it's hard to beat something modelled on the physical world.
I can dump 7,000 words into powerpoint, chose a terrible font and terrible colours, fill it with weird clip art and transitions, and then bore and confuse my audience.
I like the idea of powerpoint. But there are far too many examples of suboptimal powerpoint presentations.
Perhaps there should be a gallery of good presentations (this probanly exists) which have the slides but also a video of the actual presentation, so people can compare the sparse slides and detailed talk.