Power Points... a great tool, but one to use wisely

The variety of content was great; I enjoyed the many different directions and foci. A few technical points leapt out as examples to emulate and to beware of. I personally find too many transition sound effects to be distracting. To me, they are like exclamation points, to be used sparingly so they retain their impact. The smart art graphics were something I haven’t played with before, so I was interested to see how everyone utilized them, and the variety of styles and colors available. My favorite effect I saw is using a photo for the background of a slide, but fading it out a bit so the font contrasts better. Josh Stohl did this especially well with a photograph of his grandparent’s wall of art and family treasures. Adding in a little glow around the font is another trick for making it stand out against the background.

The things to beware of are the same as always: too much text on a slide, reading the slides directly to the class and font that is hard to see against the background. Rachel’s presentation about malnutrition had powerful images, but due to the limitation of the number slides set by the assignment, the hard choice was where to put a list of facts. I agree with the choice of not trying cluttering the most powerful images of starving children, but the “Facts” slide then had font that was too small to read easily. The “Symptoms” slide was about the perfect balance of size and amount of info, I thought. My own presentation was guilty of some over wordiness too, which may mean this is just a problem with biologists making presentations? ;)

I’ve used power point a lot for class presentations. In online classes, I have my students make freestanding shows that are posted for a week at a time for class discussion. It has worked well in that venue. Power point is a tool that can really illustrate and support a presentation’s organization, or starkly reveal a presentation’s lack of organization. Just like any other tool, it has to be used correctly and for the right reason to be effective. Using it just because it is available leads to “death by power point,” a terribly affliction epidemic in society today.