Attorneys and Professors should never use Power Point.

[Maddy McCall]

If you want to put a captive audience to sleep, use a Power Point presentation. As a matter of fact, if I can figure out how to have a PP presentation projected on my ceiling above my bed, I can cure this nasty insomnia that's plagued me lately.

As a matter of fact, NO ONE should ever use Power Point. Boring.

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. Not even fourth graders doing a computer project???

;) :hi:

[Maddy McCall]

15. I'll excuse all grade schoolers.

:D :hi:

[Rabrrrrrr]

34. OMG, especially not school children!!

I think forcing kids in schools to do their presentations in PowerPoint is pure pedagogical LAZY ASSNESS. And it's totally inappropriate, and is pedagogically BANKRUPT.

What a goddamn waste of their time, talents, resources, and an utter ignoring of their needs.

Learning how to use a specific form of software is not education. It's JOB TRAINING - at the taxpayer's expense!! - and at the child's educational expense.

Any teacher who forces their students to use PowerPoint, or Adobe, Publisher, or fuckin' whatever to do a presentation/report/whatever should be FIRED IMMEDIATELY!! unless they are actually teaching a class on the use of software, which is the only appropriate time to do it.

To take an English class, and spend 30% of time teaching them how to use a piece of software that will no longer exist when they graduate is a GODDAMN WASTE OF TIME!

And how much does it cost the school to get a license for Microsft Office for 50 or 500 computers? Fucking too much, that's what.

But some of you may be saying, "But we need to teach skills!!"

BULLSHIT!!

We need to give them an education and teach them how to learn.

Fuck skills. They'll learn those on the job - when they have one TEN YEARS LATER when they're legally old enough to work, you assholes!

[Debi]

35. Skills...

Napoleon Dynamite: You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.

[LynneSin]

2. My life IS Power Point

Maybe it's the context of the presentation that is boring as hell.

I put out a 50+ page Powerpoint document each month.

:cry:

Now you're calling me boring

:cry:

[Maddy McCall]

14. Honey, I know from your posts at DU...

that you are NEVER boring. :D

[LynneSin]

19. Thanks - you too

:D

[Debi]

36. Do your powerpoint presentations

have cowbell?

[KurtNYC]

17. David Byrne (Talking Heads) found a whole other use

for Powerpoint:



http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt1.html

[Heidi]

3. PowerPower insults the intelligence of the audience.

I've never understood why anyone would use it or want an audience to know they use it.

(Edit to add: LynneSin, I'm sure your PP presentations aren't boring, though I'm not sure how I'm sure of that, since I've never seen an engaging PP presentation.)

[Maddy McCall]

11. Amen

Reducing complex lectures to bullet points. Aaargh!

[Heidi]

16. Part of the problem, I think . . .

is that folks making PP presentations simply parrot everything the presentation says, instead of using the PP presentation to underscore or illustrate a few key points. Consequently, many come away from such a presentation with either: A) information overload of the mind-numblingly redundant variety or B) no idea what they've just seen and heard.

Also, I've seen far too many PP presentation which are just downright dictatorial: no dialogue or exchange of ideas between the audience and the person making the presentation. For me, that's probably the least engaging way of receiving or imparting information.

(Edit for clarity)

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

32. Good point

I'm making a PP presentation at this exact moment, but it's nothing except screenshots. The real content will come from my vocal cords.

[tigereye]

27. couldn't agree more

although I do think it is a good way to organize a talk, it is boring to watch. If the presenter has a sense of humor and puts in some cartoons, it is a lot better. When I do talks, I always use a white board. But then I'm an old fogie.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. I Can Make It Work

I have for years. Nobody, and i mean nobody, sleeps when i'm at the front of the room. I'm too animated and too loud!

I like to have some other medium, though, like a white board to do adjunct explanations. Actually, though i've never done a class lecture with PP. Just work presentations and training in statistics for private industry.
The Professor

[ret5hd]

9. now THERE'S something to make you want to get out of bed on a monday...

a training class in statistics!

(just kidding, prof)

[ProfessorGAC]

18. I Gotta Do, What I Gotta Do

I know the whole field is a drag, unless you have an afinity for problem solving and deeply modeling data. Trust me, there is nobody who's ever taken one of these sessions that didn't want to be there. I don't want anybody being forced into taking my classes or my seminars. If they want to be there, great! If they don't, i don't want them sent to them. They won't learn anything, anyway. It would be too darned boring.
The Professor

[tigereye]

28. that's funny

I have several women friends who are statistics professors and they are some of the most fascinating people I know!

[Ilsa]

5. People rely on it too much.

It should be used as a tool, not the focus. As much as possible, I think the audience or class needs to be involved in the presentation. What is that saying? "I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I know."

[wtmusic]

6. They just have to use more wipes and dissolves between slides

:P

[LSdemocrat]

7. The problem is that people tend to use PowerPoint poorly

Most people either try to cram too much information on each slide or make the text too small, both of which hinder the comprehension and attention span of the viewer.

[LynneSin]

13. Exactly

who wants a presentation that is basically being read by the person giving the presentation.

In a nutshell with Power Point presentations:

Have key graphs with bullet point highlights of that graph - then use that slide to hold your discussion.

I see presentations where every single word the presenter wants to make is on the graph. That is NOT what PP is to be used for. I try to make presentations that all for discussion with the group in the meeting.

[NashVegas]

8. Power Point is for People Who Can't Sort Out Their Thoughts

A conclusion I came to when a manager at my company took three days to make a colorful PP presentation when a one-sheet with bullet points would have done the job.

It's also for those people who, when you were in school, used to hand in all their papers in plastic color borders with ribbons attached.

[yvr girl]

22. Power Point done correctly can be effective

Most people are not good communicators. Power Point should illustrate your points, not replicate them.

Some people retain things they have HEARD well, but most people are VISUAL learners. A combnation of audio and visual is ideal.

[Redstone]

10. You're right, nobody should use powerpoint. It's the source of

about 98% of the boredom in the world today.

Redstone

[Debi]

37. And the other 2% brought to you by Faux News

:P

[KurtNYC]

12. Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.

Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn't. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall.
...
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.

Great analysis of Powerpoint-mania by guru Edward Tufte:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html

[DS1]

20. It's not the tool, it's the user. Case in point, Flash

Flash gets a really bad rap because some people put out absolute crap.


Some people get it.

Some people don't.

[Misunderestimator]

23. Totally agree... You can give a violin to someone and expect them

to be a musician, but you'll likely be disappointed. Presentations can be done artistically and with creativity/humor.

[NashVegas]

33. I Dunno

Flash one: gorgeous, takes 15 + seconds to load on broadband.

Flash two: ugly & goofy, but usable/navigable in a hurry.


So I'll amend your thought: sometimes you get stuck with Ravel when a simple folk tune would do just as well.

[Redstone]

24. It's very, very, VERY rare for anyone to use Flash right.

I don't even own a copy. I won't let my customers have it on their websites, no matter how much they beg; it's wrong for the markets they serve (electronic design engineers don't care for extraneous bullshit; they just want information).

Redstone

[DS1]

25. Hang on, I'll find a site that will help you make your case

It's pretty to look at, but way over the top in execution. I'm sure the customer got what the customer wanted, however.

http://www.greersystems.com/siteindex.html

Click products

[GiovanniC]

21. I Make Satirical Presentations For Work

Whenever we have a big company meeting that uses PowerPoint, I put out a parody of the meeting with PowerPoint. That's about all I ever use it for these days.

[tigereye]

29. good for you!

[kick-ass-bob]

26. You can make decent shows with it.

But most people just type what they are going to say. :eyes:

It's not story time - I don't need to read what you are saying along with you.

[RobinA]

30. The Problem With PP

which I think should be banned from the earth, by the way, is that it's getting to the point where you HAVE to use it. I'm a grad student, and in some classes when you have to give a presentation, the PP is required. So we all have to snooze through each other's PP, but we all have to keep making the damn things.

[imenja]

31. more boring than my natural self?

Hmmm. I wonder.

[Lisa]

38. people laugh at me because I avoid using PowerPoint for teaching ...

Thing is, we had an occasion where they made us switch classrooms in mid-semester, to one that didn't have the right hardware available -- I was the only one who didn't have a last-minute scramble switching everything onto overhead transparencies!

Another thing is that if the power goes out, at least you have access to your notes this way (and if it's a small enough room, can hold up the larger diagrams for people to see).

[Rabrrrrrr]

39. You see, this is what 99% of the PowerPoint assholes don't get -

your sentence about "still have your notes". That shows intelligence!

Any real professional knows that, even if you are using powerpoint, you are still talking from written notes, because any real professional knows that every slide of a powerpoint presentation is there to ENHANCE the speach/lecture/presentation, not to DUPLICATE it.

The problem is, 99% of people are clueless fucking assholes who think that the powerpoint slides themselves need to hold all the notes, forcing the audience to read along while the asshole does his/her "presentation" and forcing them to look at far, far more shit than they need to, including lots of useless graphs and charts and shit, and stupid animations that do nothing to help the presentation. For anyone who would like a clue, read Gene Zelazny's (McKinsey & Co.) book on charts in presentations.

And if your presentation speech is the same as what is on your slides, than do you audience a favor - don't fucking talk. Just print out the presentation and give it to them to read at their leisure.

Anyone with a brain that funcitons above the worm level knows that, if one MUST use PowerPoint, one must use it intelligently, and only to HIGHLIGHT portions of the presentation.

If someone is so fucking dumb that their entire presentation is WITHIN the powerpoint document, they should a) be executed by the FBI within the frst minute of the presentation, and b) executed by the CIA if the FBI didn't manage a successful "neutralization".

Fucking stupid useless moron fucking asssholes.

it's amazing how much the art of giving a presentation has been lost. Really, truly, and disgustingly lost.

[kodi]

40. the solution is a good soundtrack

try it.

[Seabiscuit]

41. WTF is "Power Point"??? Never heard of it. And I'm an attorney.

I don't need no stinkin' crutches when I'm in court. The English language is 'jes fine all by itself.

[Dookus]

42. It's not the tool

it's the user.

I've used PowerPoint for years, and I've sat through even more PP presentations. They can be great or awful, depending on the creativity and smarts of the person presenting.

It's just a slide show - people made crappy presentations with slides before PowerPoint came along. And before that, they made crappy presentations with shadow-puppets.

It's just a tool - it's like blaming audiotape for crappy music.

[Sufi Marmot]

43. Oh please...PowerPoint is perfect for teaching classic literature!

Power Point Anthology of Literature

-SM, who, like all biologists is grateful for Power Point because without it we'd have to render all those little cartoon models by hand.

[ForrestGump]

44. Nobody should. It's garbage.

Among other things, not being able to mix up landscape and portrait slides is a serious deficiency that they had plenty of opportunities to tweak. That they never did says a lot. That failure was the one that most consistently annoyed me, but the whole program's pretty useless. Never much bothered to investigate alternatives because, like MS Word, Powerpoint's the standard at academic/research instiututions and conferences.

I never used Powerpoint as anything but a conduit for Photoshop slides...did all my slides in Photoshop (mine are always graphics-heavy, anyway), text and all, because that program and the whole aesthetic thing is more in keeping with my personality and preferences. Importing beautiful Photoshop pictures into junky Powerpoint is just not right, though. But it sure beats the patented Powerpoint look, the exact same slide backgrounds and tacky embellishments popping up on just about every talk at every conference, all of them cookie-cutter pieces of clonal art that compete only with the usually-mindnumbing droning of bad speakers to induce sleep. Bleh...

[ForrestGump]

45. Sure, usually it's the user who's at fault

As mentioned above, I think Powerpoint is a massively flawed program that's basically crap. But most of what I read in this thread is concenred more with flaws in presentation style, presentations that would have been at least as dull or confusing back in the (recent) days when projected 35-mm slides ruled the Presentation Universe.

I've written whole tracts on the subject, and preached the gospel to the masses, but the gist of all I've learned (and naturally come by) in giving a talk boils down pretty much to over-rehearsing the talk until it no longer seems rehearsed and then departing and ad-libbing as necessary to keep the audience engaged. Even the best talk, even if it's only 15 minutes long, can be hard to sit through when you're at a multiday conference and attending talks all day. A good presenter has clear and concise slides (but a GOOD presenter can get away with no slides, if he or she has to), though I do like to make mine little minature works of art within those constraints. A good presenter doesn't read every single word off the things...they also don't scan a huge table and then say "now, I just want you to focus on this section" (or, infinitely worse, READ the whole damned table out loud...I've actually seen this, and I could not believe it). To my mind, and perhaps this is partly just a reflection of my own character, a good presenter is as much rock star as authority in whatever field is under discussion. It's 100% a performance, and to not respect the eprformance is to not respect both your audience and your subject matter. Some will always be better at it than others -- some rock stars are more capable than others, as are some comedians and some artists -- but you should do what you can within the stretched-out-to-the-max bounds of your own limitations.

Unfortunately, most in academia (certainly in my corner of it) are not especially good at communicating, at least not in the more standard kind of idiom that more likely promotes wakefulness and comprehension. It helps to have a good mentor or two to get you off on the right track, but there aren't a lot of good role models out there. And, as people become more reliant on gimmicks in Powerpoint, I suspect the field will narrow even further.