The Evil that is PowerPoint

Certainly, as is the case with any tool, there are abundant misuses. Edward Tufte makes an excellent point in his essay “PowerPoint Is Evil: Power Corrupts, PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely” seen in Wired Magazine (2003): “Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis. . . . 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.” Tufte explores the numerous mistakes people tend to make with PowerPoint, but offers few solutions.

Classroom use of PowerPoint is no exception. Poor teacher training (professional development, undergraduate education classes, etc.), the lack of premium example presentations, and the proliferation of ill-formed slideware among educators contribute to poor classroom use of PowerPoint. Teachers, students, businessmen, and other professionals get stuck including graphics, text, animations, and sounds because it’s possible—not because it’s the best way to get information across. Perhaps specific research should be conducted which would seek to find the best methods of conveying learning in a way which results in long-term storage through the use of PowerPoint.

According to M. D. Roblyer in Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (Fourth Ed.), users of PowerPoint should keep in mind several creative aspects. For example, users should create slides which enhance the presentation rather than using them as a teleprompter. PowerPoint should be used when a dark room is an appropriate environment. Font type, size, and color should be considered carefully. Graphics, animation, and audio must be relevant. Teachers need to explicitly teach these considerations in order to foster student success. Without this imperative instruction, students will make the same mistakes all humans are prone to: they’ll get caught up with putting things on slides because they can rather than pondering the specific purpose of appealing to an audience.