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Attack of the PowerPoint-Wielding Professors

Posted by kdawson on from the all-power-corrupts-and-powerpoint-corrupts-absolutely dept.

theodp writes "A CS student blogger named Carolyn offers an interesting take on why learning from PowerPoint lectures is frustrating. Unlike an old-school chalk talk, professors who use PowerPoint tend to present topics very quickly, leaving little time to digest the visuals or to take learning-reinforcing notes. Also, profs who use the ready-made PowerPoint lectures that ship with many textbooks tend to come across as, shall we say, less than connected with their material. Then there are professors who just don't know how to use PowerPoint, a problem that is by no means limited to college classes."

4 of 467 comments (clear)

  1. o What's Wrong With Powerpoint by BigBlueOx · · Score: 5, Funny

    Today we're talking about what's wrong with Powerpoint.

    o And Why It Should Be Banned

    And why its use should be banned.

    o Speakers just put up bullet list and then read from it.

    The biggest problem is that speakers put up a Powerpoint bullet list and then just read from it.

    o Like their audience is illiterate or sumpin.

    Like they think their audience is a bunch of illiterates or sumpin.

    o Powerpoint presenters also say things like "actionizing our solutioning".

    Also, Powerpoint seems to encourage speakers to say things like "actionizing our solutioning".

    SLIDE 1

    Let's move to slide 2.

    1. Re:o What's Wrong With Powerpoint by jonaskoelker · · Score: 2, Funny

      Your post advocates a

      (X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

      approach to fighting PowerPoint. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
      (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
      have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
      law was passed.)

      ( ) Professors can easily use it to harvest email addresses
      (X) Boardroom presentations and other legitimate PowerPoint uses would be affected
      ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
      ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
      ( ) It will stop PowerPoint for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
      (X) Users of PowerPoint will not put up with it
      (X) Microsoft will not put up with it
      ( ) The police will not put up with it
      (X) Requires too much cooperation from professors
      ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
      (X) Many PowerPoint users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential
      employers
      ( ) Professors don't care about invalid student IDs in their lists
      ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

      Specifically, your plan fails to account for

      ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
      ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for PowerPoint
      ( ) Open diploma mills in foreign countries
      ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
      ( ) Asshats
      ( ) Jurisdictional problems
      ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
      ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
      (X) Huge existing software investment in PPT
      ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
      ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
      ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
      ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
      (X) Extreme profitability of tenure
      ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
      ( ) Technically illiterate politicians
      ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with professors
      ( ) Dishonesty on the part of professors themselves
      ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
      (X) Outlook

      and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

      ( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
      been shown practical
      ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
      ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
      ( ) Blacklists suck
      ( ) Whitelists suck
      (X) We should be able to have presentations about Viagra without being censored
      ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
      ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
      ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
      (X) Giving talks should be free
      ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
      (X) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
      ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
      ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
      ( ) I don't want the government reading my slides
      (X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

      Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

      (X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
      ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
      ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
      house down!

  2. You are not kidding by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I'm a third grade teacher, and my boss recently told me that my students need to be taught powerpoint so they can learn to make presentations. Mind you, my third graders are only now learning to touch type.

    But then, my boss presents everything in PP, tends to read the slides aloud, and relies on cool whiz-bang effects a and graphics to tart up his presentations.

    I guess if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

  3. The proper way to use Powerpoint by SomeoneGotMyNick · · Score: 4, Funny

    .....is certainly not demonstrated in this video. However, I do see more and more of this style these days

    How NOT to use Powerpoint