PowerPoint No, Cyberspace Yes vs. Learning to Love PowerPoint

According to Tom Creed, PowerPoint is not productive for teaching at all. Email or any electronic communication is the way to get students involved. Creed is all for technology and digital education, however, he believes that PowerPoint is not the kind of technology that promotes interactive learning. PowerPoint presentations are "teacher-controlled", "teacher-centered", and do not tell about what the students are getting from the lecture. Email and electronic communication are "student-controlled", "student-centered", and inform the teacher about student progress and understanding. Teaching should be all about the students' learning, not concentrated on the teacher and what they can teach.
On the other hand, David Byrne encourages people to use PowerPoint and finds many positive aspects in the application. PowerPoint is convenient and fairly easy to use, which has become the definition of something good. Quality does't matter as much as simplicity in a set and organized way. For content, Byrne did not find much use in it, however, for art, PowerPoint became very useful. Creating interesting art can be used with PowerPoint. Other than that, Byrne found nothing revolutionary about the product.

Bullet Points Kill

In the article called Bullet Points Kill by Cliff Atkinson, the PowerPoint application is defined differently than ever before. A PowerPoint presentation with bullet points does not make a presentation. It is harder to understand. This is because one topic is fragmented into smaller parts which are the bullet points themselves. Bullet points just separate one idea and then most likely get mixed up in a person's brain. A way of overcoming this is by a technique that is illustrated by Atkinson. One should get a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle. On the left side, the title and bullet points should be written. One thing that can encompass all of the thoughts on the one slide is written down on the right side of the vertical line. The pictures, movies, or maybe few words that are thought of on the right side are what should be in a PowerPoint presentation. Atkinson proves that there is a reason PowerPoint is in landscape form like TV's and movie screens. These three things should all be alike by the fact that they can "extract understanding" from more than one brain, more than one person, but large groups of people.

A Broken PowerPoint Culture

People today have not noticed that PowerPoint is not used correctly and is not beneficial to anyone. PowerPoint presentations water down information, filter important facts, and put data into bullet point form that does nothing to connect or apply to people. PowerPoints are causing students to fall asleep which makes teachers' jobs even harder. There is no creativity or intellect in PowerPoint according to Cliff Atkinson. Atkinson also believes that bullet points should be banned in major businesses to be effective. Bullet points only put people to sleep and make them not want to listen. The PowerPoint application according to Atkinson should be used by trained people who understand the dangers that PowerPoint can have because of the uncreativity and disabled way of getting points across to workers and students.

The Sound of One Room Napping

PowerPoint presentations have become almost like Microsoft Word. They are merely slides full of information that could very well be written in a written document. Businessmen, teachers, and any presenter has made PowerPoint into something that presents the facts and is not used as a tool for presentations. Slides are full of titles and bullet points that merely give information with text without using technology. Powerpoint is technology, but people have come to use it as an application to takes notes with life a whiteboard or a blackboard. Why use something with high technology for something that needs a dry erase marker and a whiteboard?

PowerPoint Is Evil vs. PowerPoint Is Not Evil

In the article called PowerPoint Is Evil, the man claimed that PowerPoint was evil because of how it did not give enough information. He also thought that a PowerPoint presentation concentrated too much on the presentation and not the actualy facts. Tables are always split up and words are minimal, which make a need for more slides. The more slides there are, the more little facts there are. All the little facts in a small amount of time are hard to process. Even though the information is hard to process, the actual reading on one slide is only about 8 seconds. This allows the audience not to get very much information on one slide and the presentation drags on forever just to get through all the facts. Mr. Tufte clearly dislikes Powerpoint because it has substituted a presentation and hasn't just been a tool for a presentation.
The argument that Tom Rocklin suggests is that PowerPoint is not Evil by itself. He declares that it depends on how the application is used while teaching and presenting. PowerPoint can help illustrate a difficul concept like it assisted Mr. Rocklin, however, it can also distract and not teach anything. Powerpoint presentations are not beneficial to everyone, in every circumstance, and everywhere. At times, notes on the board or a projector suffice. However, Rocklin believes that at times, PowerPoint can help students learn better if the technology provided is used in the right way.