Presentation Zen
“Long before there was “death-by-PowerPoint,” there were bad presentations. Really bad presentations. So don’t blame the software or Microsoft; the genesis of painfully dull presentations predates the computer. ”
Garr Reynolds on Presentation Zen blog
While I would not go as far as Jay H Lehr suggested in his paper called Let there be stoning , there is no excuse for ‘death by PowerPoint’ in the education business.
We as teachers are allowed to do things like run MS PowerPoint in authoring mode on the projector and invite our students to add views or make comments – interaction might help them understand and gives us feedback on the quality of understanding. Lessons are scheduled each week so we can load up what was said last week and review material. We as teachers perhaps need to see PowerPoint as part of a sequence of lessons and use it more like a diary or record than the typical Dilbertian executive.
Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen blog is aimed at people who sell things – and who give a presentation to a large , skeptical audience once. His most recent article suggests having a spare computer or using a photo capable iPod as a reserve backup with slides popped on as photo images. I like the idea of printing PowerPoints to PDF format and showing the PDF from any local PC that can be found.