Evaluating negative impacts of PowerPoint presentations

¶ … EVIL?

As a result of today's technological advances, many students are using what is known as PowerPoint, an electronic slideshow introduced by Microsoft that provides images and pictures as a supportive framework along with the written word, usually in the form of an essay composed by a student to be read before his/her class. Not surprisingly, many educators, teachers and instructors view PowerPoint as a reliable and effective alternative to simply reading an essay in front of a class; however, others view PowerPoint as being "evil," meaning that it greatly decreases a student's need to write a cohesive essay that will maintain a level of interest in the listener via the application of the spoken word. Thus, this essay will attempt to show why some professional educators view PowerPoint as "evil" and as a form of technology which ultimately "dumbs down" not only the presenter but also the audience.

The process utilized to write this essay includes using several websites from the Internet which specifically addresses the issue of PowerPoint being "evil," along with some personal thoughts on whether PowerPoint is as bad as educators say it is. Basically, we will examine one very simple question related to PowerPoint -- what possible consequences might arise as a result of using this so-called "new age of the image" format when it comes to writing and reading?

One of the most outspoken detractors of PowerPoint is Edward Tufte, professor emeritus of political science, computer science and statistics, and graphic design at Yale University. In his opinion, PowerPoint, or what he refers to as "slideware," can often help speakers/presenters to outline their essays before presenting them to their classmates, but "convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience," meaning that a PowerPoint presentation in a classroom setting "elevates format over content" and yields to "an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch" (2009, Internet). What Tufte is referring to is that the focus of the presentation to a classroom full of students is more toward how the subject matter is presented in the form of images and pictures, rather than on how well the presenter has composed his/her essay.

Tufte also points out that in the "old days" before computers and high-tech gadgets, teachers in a classroom setting often used overhead projectors to show photos, maps and other images to their students; however, it was the teacher and not the student who presented the images and gave the talk/lecture to the students. In other words, the teacher, perhaps in an American history class, was the expert and not the student, thus making the presentation professional and educational. In addition, Tufte reminds us of a "particularly disturbing" trend in today's schools, being that children are taught "how to formulate client pitches and infomercials" (2009, Internet) with PowerPoint rather than shown how to compose essays/reports the old-fashioned way, i.e., by using the English language to create sentences.

Certainly, using PowerPoint in a classroom setting on a daily or weekly basis tends to decrease a student's need to know how to write properly. Traditionally, a student was required to write a grammatically-correct paper/essay and then present it to his/her class by standing up front and reading it to their fellow students. When such a thing was done properly and when the essay was well-written, it contained words that created images in the minds of the listeners, thus allowing the free flow of abstract thinking. But with PowerPoint, all a student has to do is present pictures/images to their fellow students and allow these images to "tell the story" while the presenter reads perhaps a few written lines of description as support for the images. In this instance, one could say that PowerPoint is "evil" because it "dumbs down" the subject matter being presented instead of relaying information via the power of the written word.