Powerpoint in the classroom: love it or hate it?

I hated classes that used power point when I was in school. I even hate power point now that I'm in the working world

 

Drop a few bucks to the great Edward Tufte, slip this under your bosses' door and your .ppt troubles might just be over.

Well, I'll be cheering for you anyway. I more or less refuse to use it for any kind of regular classroom activity for the same reasons as you. Luckily no one's given me any guff about it. I've used it now and then for conference presentations, but I do my best to avoid it.

 

I rarely use it, and when I do, I only use it for images and illustrations, and never for text/outlines of what we're talking about.

Not only does it kill the teacher's presence in the classroom, it kills off that of the students, too, since many of them don't listen enough to participate or take notes, since they can go to Courseweb or Blackboard and just print up the "outline," as if those skimming stupid bullet points as useful as participating and taking notes.

By the way, most people I know who work in business (including a VP for MellonNY) think that power point is a waste of time there, too. The VP was happy when I gave him my copy of that piece MichaelK links too... which I had already used to get ammunition for the time when a dean at my college tried to get EVERYONE to use the program, no matter how appropiate it is or not. I'm glad I learned how to use it, since I'm in a better position to argue for it's worthlessness as a result.

 

I have students use it for selected activities, but provide a grading rubric that makes clear that it and a handout must complement the oral presentation, not replicate any part of it. I use it rarely in lecture, in place of slides and/or overheads, when I have images I want to share - as a complement only.

But if I walk into a meeting and PP is cued up, I am pretty sure I'll get to grade papers instead of pay attention - especially when they hand me a whole stack of papers containing the PP itself in print form.

 

I don't mind PPT so much, but I absolutely hate it when someone is using PPT and then they begin to read it word-for-word. I know how to read. If you post paragraphs of text on the slides and can't take the lecture any further than your PPT, just post it and walk out. This is one of my biggest pet peeves.

I remember getting griped at by a professor in college because I was playing solitaire on my laptop as he read his PPT to the class. I told him that I was reading the slide and entertaining myself as I waited for him to read it to everyone else.

If you have a Smart Board you would be able to use PPT and write on the board at the same time. It is a great piece of equipment for the classroom.

 

I had a college professor who would read PP slides word for word. The PP slides he used were provided by the company that provided the book, and they were pretty much a basic outline of the book. Don't think I read that book once and got an A in the class. of course, class was boring as hell.

 

When I subbed for 6 weeks in a AP English class and senior English, I only used PP for the seniors and only to list vocabulary words that would be on a test. My rationale was that my whiteboard printing is good but not quite so clear as the PP text. I could pay attention to the class, since I showed the entire list at once.

I could have given them a handout, but that uses paper.

Most of the kids had a spiral notebook for the class, so they just wrote the words and the definitions down. I said them aloud and gave some etymology on occasion. There were 10 words, so it took less than 10 minutes. I did it at the beginning of the period, after roll, so I had the PP ready to go when they came in.

Some kids are auditory, some are visual, and some learn better when they copy stuff down themselves; at least that's what I'm told.

As an aside, in my former occupation as a civil service supervisor, I've been in meetings where entire 20 page ppts were read. It's insulting to anyone who's half way intelligent.

 

I agree that PPT has some benefits in the classroom. I used a PPT when I was introducing the Panama Canal in a secondary US History class. As long as the speaker knows the dos and donts of PPT it is useful. The problem is many people just dont get it.

I actually had a PPT Seminar day with my 11th grade students to get them aquainted it before they get to college. It seems that I had to make a million PPT presentations in college.

 

Just saw this article linked to aldaily.com. Not sure how long it will be accessible, since the Chronicle of Higher Education is a pay site.

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i42/42a00103.htm

When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom

College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled "smart" classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to "teach naked" — by which he means, sans machines.

More than anything else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather than using it as a creative tool. Class time should be reserved for discussion, he contends, especially now that students can download lectures online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on their college years later in life, they're going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors. Lively interactions are what teaching is all about, he says, but those give-and-takes are discouraged by preset collections of slides.

He's not the only one raising questions about PowerPoint, which on many campuses is the state of the art in classroom teaching. A study published in the April issue of British Educational Research Journal found that 59 percent of students in a new survey reported that at least half of their lectures were boring, and that PowerPoint was one of the dullest methods they saw. The survey consisted of 211 students at a university in England and was conducted by researchers at the University of Central Lancashire.

....

Most students seem more attentive now, he says, though a few have been thrown off by the new system.

"Strangely enough, the people who are most resistant to this model are the students, who are used to being spoon-fed material that is going to be quote unquote on the test," says Mr. Heffernan. "Students have been socialized to view the educational process as essentially passive. The only way we're going to stop that is by radically refiguring the classroom in precisely the way José wants to do it."

 

I admire the intent behind that move, not being a powerpointer, but I'd be miffed if they took the computer/net connection out of my classroom or leaned on me not to use it. I can't count the number of times I've shown something (an old clip or video, a trailer, or something such) off Youtube. Sometimes right off the cuff.

 

PowerPoint is a tool to be used along with other tools such as ELMO, flip charts, discussion groups, white board, SmartBoard, etc.

A good PPT presentation is basically an outline. Use the 6 x 6 rule - no more than 6 lines and no more than 6 words per line. It's great to show charts and graphs (and even video these days). But it cannot be the sole source of content.

However, if your room is not pre-configured with LCD projector and screen the setup and tear down can be tedious, not to mention the wiring and real estate required by the objects.

 

Hate it

 

Two recent experiences: a meeting with a university VP who asked that we all print off a copy of the PP before coming to the meeting (ugh!), and an oral final where my students were permitted to use two power point slides for their 7 minute presentation. Each slide had a particular dynamic it had to meet, and it worked well.

 

I would get rid of Powerpoint entirely for my training (Orientation to providing services to people with DD), but there is so much information to go through in a short time,that I have to present salient points in a format they can take away and review later.

Lots of handouts,but most times I don't hook up the projector.I think instructors who rely on Powerpoint to lecture are not confident in their classroom presentation skills.

 

Personal Experiences with PPT (Currently in my final term of my BA degree)

The most common place that I found it to be used was in the History department, even by prof's who had already considerable experience in teaching to classes without it. They generally got around the issue by either putting their own experiences into it (one prof included pictures he had taken in Europe relating to the subject at hand) or by putting their own words into it. One prof, who used PPT and allowed students to access them online put his own aspect to it. These included....

The story behind the term "cutting off the nose to spite the face" (History of the Vikings)
Giving birth to a fire child is rather painful (Mythological beliefs behind the founding of Japan)
Why teachers should never have a relationship with students (Peter Abalard)

In terms of using powerpoint, the first time I used it was a disaster given that I had done it on a 2007 version of powerpoint but the laptop my prof borrowed from the college only had the 2005 version (.pptx vs. .ppt). The next class I had with him I would have my own laptop by that time and gave a powerpoint presentation on my seminar topic. In both cases, I had to submit a typed version of my presentation 1 week afterwards, which forced a lot of people to be sharp in their presentations.

In POLS courses, the profs tended to be mixed on PPT usage although my Classmates in my International Law class used PPT quite frequently. I found it useful in that case since it allowed me to illustrate the sources for the topic I used. Most sociology profs still used the old overhead system and, rarely, the whiteboard.

 

Another thing PP is useful for is webinars.I've attended a series of these lately and it's been useful to have something to follow along with while the presenter is speaking.

 

In b-school, it doesn't seem to matter either way. The good professors who use PowerPoint would almost certainly still be good professors if they eschewed it. They simply have charisma and good speaking skills and easily command the class's attention away from the slides.

For the more technical material, though, I think it's a godsend (or at least no worse than overhead slides). It's helpful in class and really helpful for later studies.

 

I love to use Powerpoint. Its one of the finest presentation tools. But to use it in a classroom, no i would not.

 

A friend of mine and I have both been urged by higher-ups to use PP in order to ... "organize" ... our lectures. I'm new to this, so I have no point of comparison, but my friend is in his 4th year and can compare the results of PP/no-PP.

Without question, students are performing worse, but they feel more comfortable and like the PP.

What's sick is that in order for my friend to get tenure, Admins are essentially making him use PP.

I personally can't stand it b/c the students tune out as if they were watching tv or being entertained. But you can tell that they somehow like it. Ugh.

More later 'cuz I got to go.

 

Administrators at my wife's college tried to do this: they wanted people to use it every single day in every single class. Luckily, she and other people put together enough research to suggest that PP in the classroom isn't especially effective except under certain conditions. That made the administrators admit the real reason for their push: "we paid for this stuff, and we're going to look like idiots if no one uses it."

They're looking like idiots because no one uses it. Well, not very often. It's useful for certain things, but for the most part, it just provides an excuse for students to tune out. It also wastes a boatload of paper because stupider students assume they can print up the power point slides and get the effect of being present (physically and mentally) in the lecture/discussion.

Here's an interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on multitasking that relates to this discussion. It's posted at aldaily.com, which means since the Chronny is a pay site, it might not be up for long.

http://chronicle.com/article/Scholars-Turn-Their-Attention/63746/

That illusion of competence is one of the things that worry scholars who study attention, cognition, and the classroom. Students' minds have been wandering since the dawn of education. But until recently—so the worry goes—students at least knew when they had checked out. A student today who moves his attention rapid-fire from text-messaging to the lecture to Facebook to note-taking and back again may walk away from the class feeling buzzed and alert, with a sense that he has absorbed much more of the lesson than he actually has.

"Heavy multitaskers are often extremely confident in their abilities," says Clifford I. Nass, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. "But there's evidence that those people are actually worse at multitasking than most people."​

​

 

We have technologically advanced classrooms, and ppl do use them extensively. My cheap ass university is "fiscally conservative", so they put their resources where they'll be used. The buildings that are decked-out are used by disciplines that use the technology.

Our set-up goes way beyond PP. There are cameras everywhere, so you can focus the camera on a specific student's paper, if you wanted. You can bring in your laptap and just plug it into the projection system and voila...

It's actually really cool.

I think it's one of the free articles b/c I can see it from home.