PowerPoint is Evil

Edward Tufte wrote an article for Wired a while back (here) in which he talks about how awful PowerPoint can be.

Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn't. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall.

Tufte knows a thing or two about the topic since:

Edward R. Tufte is professor emeritus of political science, computer science and statistics, and graphic design at Yale. His new monograph, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, is available from Graphics Press (www.edwardtufte.com).

I got this link from Pastor Daniel's Blog

Enlarge Images without Making them Blocky

Lifehacker is on a roll today with the image tips. They point out the new program SmilaEnlarge which can help take those small images and make them bigger.

So if you just can't find a version of the picture large enough to project without it looking all grainy and distorted, perhaps this can help.

Below I show what a couple minutes of dinking around can accomplish. It's not perfect, but it sure looks a lot better.

Presenting with Text

Not every presentation needs to have fancy pictures. Text alone, if well used, can make powerful points. To quote Mark Parker: "PowerPoint. The name says it all. Make it powerful. Make a point. Most presentations do neither." Thanks to Mark for the link to this presentation.

Presenting with text

View more documents from Tudor Girba.

Ten Thoughts on Using PowerPoint Effectively

The good folks at the University of Texas have compiled some very good thoughts about how to use PowerPoint.

PowerPoint, when displayed via a projector, is a useful tool for showing audiences things that enhance what the speaker is saying. It is a useful tool for illustrating the content of a speech, such as by showing photos, graphs, charts, maps, etc., or by highlighting certain text from a speech, such as quotations or major ideas. It should not be used as a slide-show outline of what the speaker is telling the audience.

To put it another way - PP should offer a seperate channel of communication rather than duplicate the verbal channel.

Thanks to ESL on the Hill for this.

What if Abe used PowerPoint?

This is a great example of why people hate PowerPoint.

Gettysburg address

View more presentations from fatuousplatitudes.

Thanks to Dave Barr for pointing this out to me.