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Death by Powerpoint

Boring meetings and the main culprit seems to be PowerPoint. Edward Tufte has concerns over the Cognitive Style of PowerPoint as reported at some length by Wired Magazine (September 2002) under the headline PowerPoint is Evil.

How to not bore students with PowerPoint

• Maximum 5 to 7 slides
• Use PowerPoint for what it is good at – drawing tools and custom animations to show workflows, processes
• Use PowerPoint in editing mode to record student ideas – save – distriubute afterwards
• Use PowerPoint to introduce activities and keep the pace – like an animated lesson plan. Group activities summarised as slides so everyone knows what to do
• Use diagrams without labels and give students printouts to write on – if it is a complex diagram print the slide full size so there is plenty of room to write notes. Use questionning to get the labels written…

Keith Burnett 2004 - 2010