What I did at summer camp Fulano MS Candidate Michigan Technological University June 2, 1984

It's too easy to create slides. Because you can crank them out quickly, you make far more than are appropriate for the presentation. It wastes time. You can suck up precious time tweaking a presentation. “It’s like alcohol in the hands of a drunk,” says a presentation coach in Greenville. One military advisor from Duke University said that the U.S. military, instead of getting our allies to use PowerPoint, should give it to the Iraqis. “We’d never have to worry about them again” (WSJ, April 26, 2000). It takes too much control away from the presenter. It makes it too easy to start the presentation with PowerPoint instead of starting with ideas and using PowerPoint to reinforce them. It makes for ugly presentations. Most people are not trained in design. The computer puts tools in average hands that were once reserved only for artists. The result is ugly presentations. It can actually impede attention. Military analysts conjecture that recent appropriations from Capitol Hill have stalled because Congress cannot decipher the Army’s complex and tedious slides (WSJ, April 26, 2000). It lends itself to unnecessary competition. Presenters—particularly students—become distracted with “dueling PowerPoint.” It does not lend itself to spontaneous discussions in the classroom or boardroom. It is heavily scripted and is not a tool for discovery. It does not handle text well. The general rule for PowerPoint text is no more than three lines of text on a slide and no more than 6 words per line. Powerpoint weaknesses

Dodge the bullets Avoid Using Too Many Bullets To Try To Get Your Message Across Too Many And Your Key Messages Will Be lost Don’t Choose Clashing Color Schemes AND Don’t Animation Use

Figure from: Alley et al, 2006

Dry season starts    Ends

C HOLESTEROL LEVELS

Highest mountains in the world (wikipedia, 2008)

How the Design of Headlines in Presentation Slides Affects Audience Retention by: Michael Alley, Madeline Schreiber, Katrina Ramsdell, John MuffoAlleySchreiberRamsdellMuffo Technical Communication, Vol. 53, No. 2. (May 2006), pp Cliff Atkinson Beyond Bullets workshops: Reynolds, G., 2008, Presentationzen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, New Riders, Berkeley, CA. Blog available at: Stephen Kosslyn: Chemical and Engineering news Stop killing your students with Powerpoint Death by Powerpoint References