PowerPoint Notes

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint:
Don’t have 60 slides which just are boring. A PowerPoint should ten slides should not take more than 20 minutes. It also shouldn’t have a font size smaller than 30. The ten slides should be about ten different topics. Leave some time at the end for discussion.
Don’t fill your slides fully so no one can read them. Instead find the most important points and write them in a font no smaller than 30.

Power Point Facts

A Really Bad PowerPoint:

Seth Godin states that it’s the way people use PowerPoint which is wrong. The wrong is in the communication as we just write facts, so we might just as well write a report. When people view a slide show presentation they use two sides of judging you. So they watch you and your body language. Also they pay attention to the idea you’re presenting, often in this case they come to a conclusion quite fast. The reason for doing PowerPoints is to present an idea to other people. One should write note cards out for yourself, and make supportive slides of your idea. At the end of the show one should tell the audience the important facts, but make sure you don’t do this at the beginning.

When Brains overheat:

The author says that an expert in education thinks people teach us the wrong way. Professor Sweller states that teaching doesn’t take affect in the way we think. Part of the brain provides the memory we need for learning and tasks and such. The Professor also thinks that giving the students already solved answers is better for the working memory. The brain has a limited amount of capacity of memory of data received in a certain amount of time. Teachers often deliver the information in a harder way for students to understand than necessary. Only some of the working memory can be remembered over long periods of time. When viewing a slide show one might be overwhelmed when trying to listen to the speaker, and read the text for one’s self.

The Science behind the PowerPoint:

Richard E. Mayer has been researching about the human mindset. He’s found out that it’s not good to put more than five lines on a slide. He wrote that listeners have to senses when it comes to PowerPoint. The one being able to listen to the speaker and the other to read the slides. Also people’s minds get overloaded at some point. The author says it’s better to reduce the amount of writing on a slide and have it as handouts instead.

However he reminds us that the decision is up to us whether to reduce those many bullets found on the slides.

Natalie's blog

Summary of Natalie’s blog:

She writes that David Byrne has really enjoyed workin with PowerPoint.

I agree I think it’s pretty fun and very helpful. He likes all the possibilities he has of displaying his information. For him PowerPoint takes the place of other programs used to help him.

Tom Creed states that the technology of today is making the teachers advance too fast for the students to keep up. He prefers using textbooks because it is more understandable for the students and they don’t have to keep up with the slides. He thinks electronic communication is better for students and cheaper. I see his point there, but I disagree with him on saying that PowerPoint is a bad tool.

Facts of PowerPoint

PowerPoint Summary:

Over all there are both positive and negative things about this tool. It can be used very effective, but it can also be useless and boring. I think the most PowerPoint presentations I’ve seen have been fairly good though. Some of the speakers have done a good job on making a real effort with having handouts and notes for the audience. These kinds of presentations I much more prefer than ones that are just boring, and the material is delivered poorly. Also I have been part of the audience of rather boring PowerPoints too. It’s kind of funny when people have flashing animations and similar things, but then I really don’t receive any of the information that person is trying to give me. So sometimes it might just be better to have a speech or write a report on something than even going through making a poor presentation. I like the idea of how well PowerPoint can display certain topics with master slide for example. This can be very useful when one has more than one topic. Everything can be displayed nicely, but when it is all written together and the speaker just reads off of the slide then that’s just a waste of time. Also very helpful is the displaying of charts in PowerPoints I think.

PowerPoint can be used very well in teaching I think. However this would only be useful in some classes. One wouldn’t want to use it in English or Math for example. PowerPoint can be very good for teachers as it helps them get their point across and they can lay out their class period in doing so. I think if I were teaching a class, I would really find PowerPoint to be a good tool as I could more clearly teach students.

The PowerPoint Conflict

Research Points the Finger at PowerPoint:

Some Australian researches have found out that when your brain receives verbal and visual information at the same time, it’s harder to process. However this is exactly what happens in a PowerPoint presentation. Also they have found out that it is better for students to look at already solved problems instead of them trying to solve them.

In Defense of PowerPoint:

The writer states that PowerPoint presentations are simply boring when we watch slide after slide being shown and read to us, but that’s because of the presenter. The audience doesn’t really benefit from the slides at all, but mainly the speaker who reads off of them. When presenting something, one does not want to fill the audience with too much information they cannot possibly remember. Edward Tufte has had complaints about PowerPoint especially with the NASA Columbia incident. He says that on slide of a presentation did not fully explain the damage on the ship. The defender thinks the slide should have had less, but more important information on it. Also the experts of NASA had written what they had found out about the damage and that it wasn’t so serious, so it was their analyses that was false rather than the PowerPoint. They had also written an important fact in a small sized font, but they had already concluded it not to be significant. The experts knew exactly what they were doing and thought of it to be right, but they had written too much on the one important slide. He recommends that Tufte should use graphs for a large amount of data. His view of a good presentation is to deliver background information and display one’s points in different documents. One of those being personal notes which gives the crowd more information. Another one is slides that help show people more about the topic, such as graphs or pictures. The last on are the handouts which give clear information and references and more. PowerPoints are clearly not bad when they are used as they are supposed to.

PowerPoint Good or Evil?

Is PowerPoint evil or not?

PowerPoint is evil:

Microsoft Powerpoint is used all over the world. It is meant to help the presenter in his or her speech. Bullets have been used for many years and are good, but PowerPoint is almost designed as though it wants dominance over its audience. The speaker is wanting people to pay close attention to his bullets and fallow exactly what they say. Even worse is how much the people use them in the schools. Children are thought from an early age on, how to make PowerPoint presentations, instead of learning how to write reports which are far more descriptive. PowerPoints slides contain little information, therefore many slides are needed. This is normally very boring for the audience and not good for their understanding of the presentation. Normal reports have a lot more detail and explain something much more thoroughly which makes it easier to understand. Also making charts is not such a good idea because they can become very congested, unlike a normal table. Most important of all, it takes away your whole presentation but reading it out for you.

PowerPoint is not evil:

PowerPoint can be bad is one is more concerned with how good the presentation is, than the actual message one is trying to bring out to the audience. However we try to use the more convenient things in life. But many things we do with PowerPoint we can also do with other technology. It is simple and effective to put pictures on the presentation and add some wording to them underneath. The professor could simply add roles of a play and then write who’s they were. He also made up steps for them to work effectively. In addition he wrote a summary of what he wanted each group to make, and could upload it online. The professor also likes reading from slide notes more than his own scribbles. So PowerPoints are very useful for teachers and others because of the variety of things you can do with them.