Sunday 1 November 2015

DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION: How PowerPoint is killing critical thought


Photo via The Guardian.


Andrew Smith shares his impressions on PowerPoint as the equivalent of a sleeping pill for the eager mind while enforces "a rigidly hierarchical authority, which has not necessarily been earned. He recalls listening to a debate, on Radio 4’s Today show, about lecturing standards at British universities. He says: "I have two children at uni who have both have found lectures frustrating, so the contention of the education minister Jo Johnson that quality in this area was “highly variable” came as no surprise to me. What’s more, during sample orations on open days, I had the same experience of being bored to tears by things I felt I should have enjoyed. So when my daughter reported an exception to this rule, I knew what my first question would be.

“Did the lecturer use PowerPoint?”

“Hm. No, he just spoke,” she said.

PowerPoint is so ubiquitous that Lotte hadn’t made the connection. But the lectures I attended had left me in no doubt that Microsoft’s wildly successful “presentation” program is not just inimical to, but destructive of, deep thought, and could have been scientifically designed to put the most eager mind to sleep. The more I inquired into why this might be, the more I began to see its somnolent reflection everywhere." Read the full article in The Guardian. No PowerPoint visual resources guaranteed. E.T.P. 4'

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