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There's nothing new in the statement that PowerPoints have become nothing more than a nuance. They are ineffective and have just become something for spectators/students to look at during a presentations/lectures. In his article, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, Edward Tufte explains why this is so. A couple of his points really stood out to me.
When creating a PowerPoint, most instructors would advise you to make your slides, short, sweet, and to the point - using complete sentences on your PowerPoint is highly frowned upon. This is something that I was always taught in middle and high school when presentations became mandatory in certain classes. We would have the option to either make a visual aid - such as a poster - or a PowerPoint Presentation. More often than not, my peers and I would opt for the PowerPoint because it was the easier and faster option. Our PowerPoints were to never have more than maybe 3-5 bullets, and each bullet was to have no more than one phrase or idea. Tufte explains this as oversimplifying the material. I had never really thought about it that way, but the more I did think about it, the clearer it became. PowerPoint has become a way for us to take the information that we want to get across and condense it down into brief little snip-its of information - a trend that has been steadily growing as this age of technology advances. It makes one wonder if this simplifying of information has had any impact on the declining attention span that we are seeing in today's youth with the growing popularity of six-second videos and 140 character limits on social media outlets.
With taking this information into consideration when thinking about my future as a teacher, a couple of ways I can combat the negatives of PowerPoint would be to use handouts with my presentations. When you have a hard copy of information to pass out to students, then you're giving them the information for them to be able to follow along with on their own. If they can read through the information you're covering while you're presenting, then there will be a higher chance for total engagement in the material. Another way to have PowerPoint kick the bucket would be to use more user-interactive platforms, such as Prezi. Though similar to a PowerPoint, Prezi utilizes different animations that work towards keeping attention focused on the material by delivering it in an unusual fashion.