Session Three: The Occasional Crutch of PowerPoint

1. What do you think the author means by powerpointlessness?
It seems the author was pointing out a problem among educators, leaders, and speakers; PowerPoint is sometimes used as a bland smorgasboard of information that is redundant to the main message of the PowerPoint user. Often times, the PowerPoint can distract from a central message that appropriately complimenting the message. Things such as cheesy clip art, cheesy sound clips, and animation can be superfluously added only to bore the audience. Sometimes, a teacher may try avoid classroom engagement by funneling all interaction through PowerPoint slides. And in explaining these PowerPoint tragedies, Jamie McKenzie points out that a useful tool such as PowerPoint can easily become pointless. Clearly, the author thinks that there is positive use of PowerPoint, but sometimes those positive uses are degraded by misappropriation of PowerPoint's features.

2. Have you ever witnessed powerpointlessness? How then, according to Jamie McKenzie, can we teach students to learn to think and communicate thoughtfully with PowerPoint?
Unfortunately, I too have been the victim of powerpointlessness. I have been subjected to sermons, classroom lessons, and seminars of powerpointlessness. That might sound a bit exaggerated, but it describes the sudden realization one has when a speaker or presenter starts to read (verbatim) from each powerpoint slide. Sometimes the presenter will give you five minutes to stare at one map. Other times, a presenter may snicker or giggle at the animated functions they have inserted into the powerpoint.

The horror of that those first few moments of a powerpointless presentation are awful. One suddenly starts to look for other things to do between quickly reading each slide, since silently reading the slide occurs much more quickly than the presenter who reads aloud and then fumbles around on the keyboard to mismanage the next slide. And because presenter wants to go through every carefully crafted slide that they produced, human interaction and conversation are usually quickly suppressed by the presenter. Its really just a waste of everybody's time.

McKenzie presents some practical advice to avoid these pitfalls of PowerPoint use. She explains that PowerPoint is really secondary to the speaker himself. If the presenter makes poor eye contact or cannot project his voice in an effective manner, PowerPoint will not help the situation. In so many words, the presentation should remain an interaction between humans. Presenters should carefully select content (text, pictures, video, etc.) for the slides, and make sure that they are appropriately engaging for the intended audience.

Depth and complexity should maintained throughout the presentation, with a focus kept on the main topic. Transitions (a blend of both speaking and slides) should help to tie ideas together, instead of randomly bunching together various concepts of the presentation. Ideas should be backed up with evidence, but should be conveyed in concise verbage (or as McKenzie wrote, "distilled words." Design criteria is important, and effort should be put into the overall effect of a PowerPoint slide that will be supplementing the focal point of a message.

Overall, McKenzie raised a very good point. Too many presenters use PowerPoint as a crutch for their insecurities or weaknesses in public speaking/ classroom interaction. However, this does not need to be the case! PowerPoint can indeed be used productively, and a brief series of pointers can help to avoid the common tragedy of powerpointlessness.