[Phys-l] Death by Power point

[Ludwik Kowalski <kowalskil@mail.montclair.edu>]

This topic has already been discussed. What follows appeared this 
morning on another list. I tend to agree that slide shows, digital or 
not, can easily be abused. A traditional teacher looks at students and 
it decides what to do next, on the basis informal feedback. Rigidly 
preprogrammed lectures have often been labeled as "sage of the stage" 
shows.

> This is from this morning's Daily Telegraph newspaper (UK),
>
> No point to PowerPoint, says professor
> By Richard Alleyne
>
>
> Powerpoint presentations, beloved of the business executive, are so 
> ubiquitous that there are even PowerPoint presentations on how to do a 
> PowerPoint presentation. Now research claims to have proved what 
> millions of bored workers have suspected all along - they have little 
> power and even less point.
>
> According to the report, the brain cannot cope with having too much 
> information thrown at it at once. Having someone speak and point to a 
> screen full of facts and figures at the same time causes it to switch 
> off.
>
> A speech would be far less of a waste of time, the research claims. 
> The study, at the University of New South Wales, branded PowerPoint 
> presentations a disaster and called for them to be scrapped. Prof John 
> Sweller said there was a scientific explanation for a room full of 
> PowerPoint viewers yawning and looking at their watches after a couple 
> of minutes. He said: "If you have ever wondered why your eyes start 
> glazing over as you read those dot points on the screen, at the same 
> time words are being spoken, it is because it is difficult to process 
> information if it is coming in the written and spoken form at the same 
> time."
>
> PowerPoint is a Microsoft program for PCs. It allows a presentation to 
> be designed in a series of slides which are beamed to a wall or a big 
> screen for the speaker to use as visual aids. But what tends to happen 
> is that the speaker - often a nervous executive, trainer or sales boss 
> - merely repeats the same words as contained in the slides, so the 
> audience gets the information twice. Speakers also tend to fill the 
> screens with pie charts, graphs, slogans and bullet points, often in 
> capital letters for emphasis. That kind of repetition makes the brain 
> switch off, which could explain why so many audiences end up bored out 
> of their minds during vital but dull displays at conferences.
>
> Prof Sweller said notes should not be read aloud from a display. 
> Doubling up does not double the chances of the message getting across. 
> He added: "The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. 
> It should be ditched. It is effective to speak to a diagram, because 
> it presents information in a different form. "But it is not effective 
> to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too 
> much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is 
> being presented. "PowerPoint can backfire if the information on the 
> screen is the same as that which is verbalised because the audience's 
> attention will be split." Prof Sweller believes there is a limited 
> amount of information that a person can process at once. But Chris 
> Rothwell, of Microsoft, said: "We believe that PowerPoint remains a 
> very powerful tool that can add impact and variety, but it is no 
> substitute for being a good communicator."
_______________________________________________________
Ludwik Kowalski, a retired physicist
5 Horizon Road, apt. 2702, Fort Lee, NJ, 07024, USA
Also an amateur journalist at http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalskil/cf/