Powerpoint presentations

Most of you will most likely use Powerpoint presentations for the class presentation part of your second assignment. It is a useful skill to acquire but you should be aware of some of its drawbacks. It is estimated that PPT is used in some 30 million presentations each day and is certainly in danger of being over used.

Powerpoint can be distracting and coercive. As the lights dim for the presentation, any little interaction that remains between the speaker and the audience disappears. It makes it far too easy for both parties to stop paying attention. (Politics of PowerPoint, John Saunders, 21/11/03)

At just over 200 words, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in which he defined what the American Civil War was about, is rated as one of the great feats of concise speech-making. If you want to see what the Gettysburg Address looks like on PowerPoint have a look at a version on PPT by Peter Norvig. Especially good is the introduction:

"Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that's not right. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to reboot. Hold on a minute. Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I'm your president. While we're waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee supervising the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. It's great to be here, Dave, and you and the committee are doing a great job. Gee, sometimes this new technology does have glitches, but we couldn't live without it, could we? Oh - is it ready? OK, here we go....",

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation, Peter Norvig

For a list of articles discussing the impact of PowerPoint, look at the Powerpointless website