Assignment #2

Research Points the Finger at PowerPoint
Against PowerPoint: It is difficult to process information if it comes to you both in spoken and written form.
The Australian researchers who these findings have declared the death of the PowerPoint presentation. The reasearch shows the human brain gets more information in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time. The findings also show that there are limits on the brain's capacity to process and retain information in short-term memory. Professor Sweller, from the university's faculty of education, developed the "cognitive load theory".He said that the use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster and that it should be detched.
In Defense of PowerPoint
Most of the people give poor talks. If we are lucky, the points are laid out logically, starting with the history, the current situation, the analysis, and the recommendations or conclusions. So we can say that the dull stuff comes at first and the interesting part at the end, and often the speaker runs out of time. Good speakers start with something interesting. We can start with an example. We should get the audience interested in the talk. They whet the appetite and then they present the necessary background information, but when someone knows what is coming, this material will be interesting rather than dull and dreary when the same stuff is presented before the audience knows why. Listeners cannot listen to too much information at once. We have to make the listeners interested enough to explore the subject on their own. If we talk too much the listeners becomes overloaded and he will give up and stop fallowing. Tufte believes that nothing could be more delightful than a graph or chart which can capture the interest for hours. Tufte also tells much about why the slide is so poor and why it does not give useful information. He believes that PowerPoint is bad. Some experts on NASA Columbia incident gave a presentation to others to announce their findings. The fault is with the findings and not with the slides. The slide presentation was meant to present the conclusion of their report. Therefore the more important points. It does not mean the fault lies in the presentation, nor in the tool used to present it. The speech giver should really develope three different documents.
1) Personal notes, only the speaker has to see it and used as a reminder of the topics and key points.
2) Illastrative slides. These slides shouldillustrate the major points and help inspire the listeners. Tufte believes that this is not entertainment but the writer responds that if the audience is not entertained, they do not listen.
3) Handouts. The speaker writes references, the data and appendices for his talk.
The writer also says that the listeners would like to have hanouts to refresh their memory later. He also thinks that they are correct.
But is PowerPoint bad? No, it is a useful tool. Boring talks and poorly strutured talks are bad. We must not blame the problem on the tool. Is PoerPoint responsible for the Columbia disaster? No. The PowerPoint slides reflected the judgement of the committee.