What I did at summer camp

FulanoMS Candidate

Michigan Technological UniversityJune 2, 1984

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• It's too easy to create slides. Because you can crank them out quickly, you make far more than are appropriate for the presentation.

• It wastes time. You can suck up precious time tweaking a presentation. “It’s like alcohol in the hands of a drunk,” says a presentation coach in Greenville. One military advisor from Duke University said that the U.S. military, instead of getting our allies to use PowerPoint, should give it to the Iraqis. “We’d never have to worry about them again” (WSJ, April 26, 2000).

• It takes too much control away from the presenter. It makes it too easy to start the presentation

with PowerPoint instead of starting with ideas and using PowerPoint to reinforce them.

• It makes for ugly presentations. Most people are not trained in design. The computer puts tools in average hands that were once reserved only for artists. The result is ugly presentations.

• It can actually impede attention. Military analysts conjecture that recent appropriations from Capitol Hill have stalled because Congress cannot decipher the Army’s complex and tedious slides (WSJ, April 26, 2000).

• It lends itself to unnecessary competition. Presenters—particularly students—become distracted with “dueling PowerPoint.”

• It does not lend itself to spontaneous discussions in the classroom or boardroom. It is heavily scripted and is not a tool for discovery.

• It does not handle text well. The general rule for PowerPoint text is no more than three lines of text on a slide and no more than 6 words per line.

Powerpoint weaknesses

Dodge the bullets• Avoid• Using• Too• Many• Bullets• To • Try• To• Get• Your• Message• Across

• Too • Many• And • Your• Key • Messages• Will• Be• lost

• Don’t

• Choose

• Clashing

• Color

• Schemes

• AND

• Don’t

• Animation

• Use

Figure from: Alley et al, 2006

Dry season starts Ends

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Highest mountains in the world (wikipedia, 2008)

Rank Mountain Height (m) Height (ft) Range 1 Mount Everest 8,848 29,028 Mahalangur Himalaya 2 K2 8,611 28,251 Baltoro Karakoram 3 Kangchenjunga 8,586 28,169 Kangchenjunga Himalaya 4 Lhotse 8,516 27,940 Mahalangur Himalaya 5 Makalu 8,485 27,838 Mahalangur Himalaya 6 Cho Oyu 8,188 26,864 Mahalangur Himalaya 7 Dhaulagiri 8,167 26,795 Dhaulagiri Himalaya 8 Manaslu 8,163 26,781 Manaslu Himalaya 9 Nanga Parbat 8,126 26,660 Nanga Parbat Himalaya

10 Annapurna I 8,091 26,545 Annapurna Himalaya

How the Design of Headlines in Presentation Slides Affects Audience Retention by: Michael Alley, Madeline Schreiber, Katrina Ramsdell, John MuffoTechnical Communication, Vol. 53, No. 2. (May 2006), pp. 225-234.

Cliff Atkinson Beyond Bullets workshops:http://www.sociablemedia.com/resources_webseminars.php4

Reynolds, G., 2008, Presentationzen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, New Riders, Berkeley, CA. Blog available at: http://www.presentationzen.com/

Stephen Kosslyn:http://io9.com/357063/how-cognitive-science-can-improve-your-powerpint-presentations

Chemical and Engineering newshttp://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/86/i13/html/8613employment.html

Stop killing your students with Powerpointhttp://www.slideshare.net/sheldonict/stop-killing-students-with-powerpoint-presentation

Death by Powerpointhttp://www.slideshare.net/thecroaker/death-by-powerpoint

References