PowerPoint, and other presentation tools like it, is either the
blessing or bane of most professors' daily work. As a tool to
project content, it has often been misused by presenters in a
hurry or too uninformed of its features to use it properly. On
the other hand, it can be very successful when used well.
PowerPoint has its detractors, though. Every article that I
reviewed for this blog posting referenced Edward Tufte's 2003
article on the Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, and talked about
his great dislike for bullet points, linear presentations, and
simplistic presentations. Tufte even called PowerPoint "content
vacuous". There are other PowerPoint detractors in addition to
Tufte. David Brier and Kaye Vickery, in a 2009 articled titled
"Perception and Use of PowerPoint at Library Instruction
Conferences" (References & User Services Quarterly) listed their
5 top characteristics of bad PowerPoint presentations: 1.
Speaker reads slides to audience 2. Overuse of text on slide 3.
Slides use full sentences and par