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a sequence of slides or movies to supplement oral presentations and as stand-alone presentations
For the live, oral part of presentations and for resources for designing and improving presentations, learn more at the Gizmos, Inc., Showroom's pages on presentations and presentations as theater.
Over-Reliance On Powerpoint Leads To Simplistic Thinking
by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas
NewsScan, December 15, 2003
NASA's Columbia Accident Investigation Board has
fingered the agency's over-reliance on Microsoft PowerPoint
presentations as one of the elements leading to last February's shuttle
disaster. The Board's report notes that NASA engineers tasked with
assessing possible wing damage during the mission presented their
findings in a confusing PowerPoint slide so crammed with bulleted items
that it was almost impossible to analyze. "It is easy to understand how
a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that
it addresses a life-threatening situation," says the report.
NASA's findings are echoed in a pamphlet titled "The Cognitive Style of
PowerPoint," authored by information presentation theorist Edward Tufte,
who says the software forces users to contort data beyond reasonable
comprehension. Because only about 40 words fit on each slide, a viewer
can zip through a series of slides quickly, spending barely 8 seconds on
each one. And the format encourages bulleted lists -- a "faux
analytical" technique that sidesteps the presenter's responsibility to
link the information together in a cohesive argument, according to Tufte,
who concludes that ultimately, PowerPoint software oozes "an attitude of
commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch."
PowerPoint
Is Evil
by Edward Tufte
Wired, September 2003
Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.
Does PowerPoint make you stupid?
by Tad Simons
Presentations, March 2004
Boredom is the word most often
associated with Microsoft PowerPoint, the world's most popular
presentation-graphics program – but stupid is quickly becoming the descriptor of
choice for the software seemingly everyone loves to hate.
Smart publications disparage PowerPoint with glee these days. In 2001, The New
Yorker published a piece called "Absolute PowerPoint," which depicted Americans
as a growing army of intellectual zombies staring mindlessly at the screen,
waiting for the next inane slide. In September 2003, The New York Times ran a
story called "The level of discourse continues to slide," which described how a
PowerPoint slide may have contributed to the mistaken conclusion, reached by
NASA engineers last February, that the space shuttle Columbia could safely
re-enter the Earth's atmosphere despite possible damage to its wing from a
falling piece of foam upon takeoff.
If you're going to use PowerPoint, at least try to make
it interesting. Tell a story. Get some characters. Give them problems. Move
toward a solution to the problem. What Doc Searls had to say way back in 1998 is
even more true today as more people have learned to use PowerPoint poorly.
It's The Story, Stupid
Don't Let Presentation Software Keep You From Getting Your Story Across
by Doc Searls
August 16, 1998
"Click 'finish' to complete your
presentation." But it's not your presentation. It's your version of a PowerPoint
presentation, which is not about what you want to say, but about how you say it.
To quote the manual, "To create presentations, you write and design slides."
Wrong. Presentations are as much about slides as poetry is about handwriting.
Again, David Ogilvy: "What you say is more important than how you say it." ...
"The world is full of beautiful presentations that never leave the screen,"
Larry says. Why? "Because they're just prosthesis. They're speakers' notes.
Reminders. They exist for the benefit of the speaker, not the audience. They
work so well as a substitute for the Real Thing that when it's over, the speaker
feels like he said something and the audience feels like something got said; but
in reality nothing got communicated at all. It's all just a simulation. And
that's if things go well. More often than not, all anybody remembers — including
the speaker — is that a bunch of slides got shown."
acquiring, editing, managing, displaying, and distributing:
text
and graphics ("slides") - this page
video and animation
("movies") - learn more
projectors and screens
Corel's Presentations
Open Office's Impress - free for the downloading
A fully featured, comprehensive office suite that integrates the tools your organization needs to be effective and productive. You can create dynamic documents, analyze data, design eye-catching presentations, collaborate with team members, publish Web content, send mail, and schedule appointments - all in one integrated desktop.
According to the PowerPoint Template Store, Microsoft PowerPoint has 95% of the market and is used for 50 million presentations a day.
In the mid-1990's when Microsoft learned that presenters using PowerPoint found it hard to get started and build a presentation from scratch, AutoContent was added. According to New Yorker magazine, the Auto Content concept -- punch a button and create a presentation -- was considered "crazy" by Microsoft programmers, and the name was meant as a joke. As noted by Ian Parker, Microsoft still took the idea and kept the name -- an example of a product named in blatant mockery of its target customers.
Microsoft PowerPoint's strength is the templates. If you have bullet-point text, you can quickly make an effective linear presentation to supplement an oral presentation. At its high end, with transitions and embedded video, these presentations can turn into movies.
Microsoft's MOUS (Microsoft Office User Specialist) certification program has an examination to validate expertise. We don't need the exam, but we can use the certification objectives as a starting point.
MOUS's PowerPoint: Core Objectives
Knocking together a quick PowerPoint presentation is such a basic job skill that you shouldn't leave school without it.
Rather than use PowerPoint's slide show view to present a canned set of slides, use the regular edit mode for brainstorming. You can add, delete, and edit content on the fly. The group starts to see PowerPoint as a flip chart. Note that Notepad, Word, and especially FrontPage can be used the same way without the page length limitations.
If you're new to PowerPoint,
open it and click
around; pull down all the menus
use the content
wizard and a template
cut
and paste bulleted lists from your text editor
insert and manipulate
some clip art
go to ActDen to get some starting pointers
At ActDen, you can go through the tutorial online or select Tutorials in Print and save them to your hard drive. Whether you actually print them out is up to you but you'll lose the animations. If you have the tutorial open and have your PowerPoint open at the same time, you should do okay.
The ActDen tutorial is for PowerPoint98, an older version. At the beginning level of this tutorial, there's not much difference between 98 and 2000. The big difference is that 2000 has multiple views showing at the same time. Otherwise, you should be able to adapt the 98 instructions to 2000 with ease.
You should go over the first four ActDen units:
1) meeting PowerPoint
2) creating slides
3) making changes
4) adding images and charts
ActDen's Office 2000 tutorial has a PowerPoint section, but it focuses more on
new features, so I wouldn't recommend it at first.
Microsoft's site doesn't have a comprehensive new user's guide, but it does have
some good info
and screen shots.
WebSiteEstates.com's Education PowerPoint Templates
Welcome students and education professionals... Website
Estates is a proud supporter of education and has created this free section just
for you.
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