As I was reading Edward Tufte’s work Powerpoint is Evil I found myself constantly in agreement. Powerpoint is nice… But it rarely enhances a presentation or comprehension of a lecture. Tufte made a great point when he said:

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.

I think there is a great need to address the problems associated with powerpoint. It is not used as a visual aid in presentations, but rather, a substitute for what a presenter is saying. Personally, if my teacher puts a powerpoint up on the screen, I immediately began to regurgitate the text from the screen on to my laptop. This causes me to completely ignore what my teacher is saying. But, I feel like if they’re showing me a powerpoint of information, I should be responsible for knowing it!

After a quick google search, I found this blog to be pretty interesting and informative. This blog indicates that bad power point is potentially wasting $250 million a day! While the writer of this blog, Alexia Kapterev, is an opponent of Powerpoint, he makes a valid argument when he says that the technology itself is not the problem, but instead, the way in which people use it.

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation was quite humorous. I love the short intro on the home page of Abraham Lincoln having some technical difficulties and telling us that “we couldn’t live without technology.” The slideshow was so unnecessary that I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Overall, while I’ve never been a fan of PowerPoint, this week’s readings furthered my distaste for the technology. I think that maybe someday, people will understand a way to properly and effectively use PowerPoint. But, until then, we’ll just all have to subject ourselves to a few more boring presentations.