Powerpoint and Teaching

SavageMinds guest blogger Michael Wesch discusses the shortcomings of powerpoint in the classroom. He stresses, in part, the linear nature of powerpoint presentations that is imposed on lectures by powerpoint’s restrictive and heirarchical format. Wesch offers an alternative … Adobe Dreamweaver … and the possibility of simple webpages where jumping between links during a lecture is possible. There are several comments and a debate about the merits of powerpoint has begun.

I don’t have anything against powerpoint but as many of the comments suggest, there I believe there is a time and a place for powerpoint. Some material lends itself well to powerpoint especially, as Ozma says, you are drawing your students towards a specific point. I use powerpoint infrequently and when I do it is mainly as a replacement for carousel slides. With my image collection in several formats … print, 35mm slide, digital … powerpoint provides a single software package into which a variety of images can be drawn. As a slide show, then, powerpoint as the benefits and limitations of any 35mm slide show from the pre-computer teaching days.

Finally, some of the best powerpoint presentations I have seen present before and after pictures, side by side.

(I appreciate hearing from students about the strengths and limitations of powerpoint. Do you like instructors who use powerpoint regularly?)

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