The trip beyond PowerPointlessness

Time and again the use of presentation software sparks debates over the appropriate use of technology in the classroom. Projecting of PowerPoint presentation often becomes a toy not a tool. Although produced to optimize a student's visual learning experience, its fancy sounds, animation and other effects that have no purpose or benefit is a significant illustration of rampant misuse of PowerPoint potentials.

You would all agree that the ability of PowerPoint to provide instructors with graphics, music, or links to web pages makes it foremost aid for beginners and professionals allowing a manner of presentation less cumbersome than we assume without an access to such a product. Getting seduced into elaborating visual concept, we can easily loose the point of our talk and fail to organize our thoughts thus presenting incoherent ideas dressed in bold colors. In other words, the skills obtained to design a presentation in PowerPoint are fundamentally different from those learnt to meet communication requirements, to stimulate creativity and critical thinking.  The hours of suffering through tedious slide presentation lacking in meaning and value, accompanied by a dry lecture about a company strategy will hardly spawn enthusiasm among employees. Neither has it strengthened team spirit. So let us reflect on a real message PowerPoint should convey and the ways we can choose to stand PowerPoint literate.

Timing considerations

Suppose your students are conducting research. Solving problems and making decisions period is followed by a multimedia production phase of the project. Let us consider the slide presentation to be the tip of an iceberg. So we expect to build a solid foundation. It is essential to set up the right proportion of time devoted to thinking and research to the time spent for making slides, that is to say, make the ideas and logic prevail over flash. It is clear that 70-80% of the total project time should be given to creating solutions and recommendations. Then the team can get to sharing findings and communicating the content of the research work.

Adequacy and sufficiency

There is a hope to see a wisely organized argument linked to clear cases or alternative theories. PowerPoint provides boxes to add place notes for each slide. Quite a simple organization of a computer slide doesn’t allow placing extensive evidence or arguments. A slide presentation can brilliantly highlight, emphasize and supplement the oral presentation. But a serious project means a hip of convincing examples and data.

PowerPoint resistance

Many teachers are reluctant to use new technologies, speaking about the shift toward so called Mentalsoftness of the students’ audience. In some cases their skepticism is based upon personal computer illiteracy. Anyway we should bear in mind that constructing meaning and building argument skills have never been neglected in academic community. PowerPoint gives an option for communicating ideas but never serves as a substitute for intelligence and talent.

Audience and distractors

What are your chances of reaching the audience? A wise presenter always cares of those who will be watching his slides. Is it possible to change their mind or simply to be heard if you don’t know their needs, attitudes, backgrounds? It is a good idea to choose strategies, examples and arguments before the presentation begins.  Put aside dazzling flashing slides with lots of transitions. You cannot afford to stand and let the software speak for you. The highest grade of presentation is to be able to settle for a few special effects and put most of your energy in persuasion.

Design, originality and balance

You can easily identify personal style by thoughtful and intentional design. Not by any means will same-old template images and constructed in haste pages give value to your project. Addressing harmony, proportion and balance in slide design we increase our chances to benefit from our presentation. If images and sounds don’t fit together, if choices of fonts and styles don’t match intention we cannot speak about creating meaning. It is also essential to scale the importance of ideas and details with larger and smaller fonts and keep the visual balance of the elements. Any discordance, any violation of presentation norms can be intentional or happened due to our negligence. We are making this endless trip beyond PowerPointlessness, we are learning to think and communicate thoughtfully and may the luck be ever in our favor!