PowerPoint IS Evil

PowerPoint to me is worthless in ever aspect of teaching or presenting. Therefore I am definitely Team Tufte.

In high school I use to think "sweet, all we're doing is a PowerPoint today", but now that I'm in college I hate doing PowerPoint's and I hate when my teachers use them. Whenever I see I a PowerPoint I think to myself, "you couldn't email that to us?" or "just print it out and let us leave".

I don't understand PowerPoint because if you put to many words on a slideshow it becomes hard to follow and you're teacher ends up letting you write everything down and not listen to a word their saying then at the end of class they say "OH!, by the way I printed this out for you!" Or if it is simple talking points for the teacher it becomes nothing but a distraction or I end up writing whatever is on the board and go back and take my own notes in a book.

I would much rather write a paper then design a PowerPoint. To me, a paper is simply graded on your content and skill. Something that won't change as long as you're writing papers. However, with PowerPoint, it's constantly changing and you're always trying to keep up or learn the latest trend. Knowing that I'm being graded on what kind of animation or picture I choose freaks me out.

Photo Credit: Scott McCloud

I can't really speak for the business setting because I'm not sure how it might hurt or help some situations. However I do agree with Tufte when he points out that "a PowerPoint slide typically shows 40 words, which is about eight seconds' worth of silent reading material. With so little information per slide, many, many slides are needed." I feel like an employee could spend their time doing something better then making a PowerPoint with a cute little background and some sweet animations.