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Tuesday, July 10, 2012

PowerPoint is (kind of ) Evil

Wired posted an article on the evils of PowerPoint (article found here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html) that I recently read. After reading this article, I was struck by two points:

1. The line of the article stating that "The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content". 
and
2. The fact that this article was written in 2003.  

I agree with the first point completely. I have seen many PowerPoint presentations that contain no substantial information and are filled completely with fluff, but are considered acceptable in the workplace or school because of the way in which they present the information. At times in the past, I've been guilty of giving a mediocre effort on a presentation but sprucing it up enough so that no one can tell.  Although I understand why PowerPoint is considered effective, I think teachers and students (as well as people in the workplace) need to be aware that the information contained in these presentations should always be accurate and complete.  

I wonder if PowerPoint is less used, and thus less evil, in 2012 than it was in 2003. When this article was written, I had just started college and wasn't aware of any presentation tools other than PowerPoint. Now I've used Prezi and other tools, and created digital stories and enhanced podcasts. I still use PowerPoint, but it's not as much of a necessity as it was 9 years ago. Because of the decreased reliance on PowerPoint, I think it's become much less of a necessary evil and has a role in the education of teachers and students as a starting off point for other more technologically advanced tools.

2 comments:

  1. Lauren, I think that you are right in the fact that it probably isn't used as much today because there are so many other options, but on the other hand in a lot of classrooms it is used just as much as it used to be because teachers don't want to do more work or don't know what other tools are available.

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    1. I agree, Maretta. Do you think though that if other teachers begin using new technologies they will eventually become "evil" and overused as well?

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