Brittnay's Blog for "The Digital Past"

I  found this article to be kind of over analytical at first.  I s PowerPoint really all that bad?  Well, apparently if you’re Edward Tufte, then yes.  I’ve used PowerPoint numerous times for simple and serious presentations for high school and previous college classes.  When I use PowerPoint, I think it’s actually very good for what I used it for, which is collecting an array of data and simplifying it into a bullet format for the audience to know and learn the most important key points.  My PowerPoint obviously have never been for statistics of anything like that, especially if stats have to be compared, but I do agree that if someone who doing a presentation on that or had to incorporate statistical value or any other kind of data into a format where it’s easier to look at if they’re side by side, then yes, I’d agree with Tufte that PowerPoint is not the best way to display it.

Also, the sentence “Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure” actually hit me pretty hard, because it’s so true!  I’ve noticed before when some people would do their p[presentations, there’s not too much relevant content or it seems mediocre compared to other peoples’, but the way they format everything and decorate the slides is would be at 100%.   I think the decorating is just a fun factor to add to the slides, so it’s not boring, and it’s really cool to have, but I do agree with Tufte that it can distract from the actual point of presenting a PowerPoint.

And from what he says about being roped into make marketing and sales pitches because of the decorating and what not, I think he’s being extreme with that.  He may notice that kind of behavior or action in a boardroom or conference room (which could justify his opinion, so it’s fine I guess) , but I’ve never had to deal with someone going too overboard just in a high school or college class.