Mistaken Journal Entry for PIDP 3240 Social Media??

Journal from FORUM page--PIDP 3240 October 25^th 2012
Death by PowerPoint

I found this video excellent only because this guy is a master of the PowerPoint!  Fortunately I have never been subjected to an over the top PowerPoint presentation, although I have seen many terrible ones.  The time this guy must have invested to complete this skit is incredible.  He is certainly accurate with respect to graphs and people overdoing it. 

My whole philosophy for this type of tool is to “keep it simple, stupid” (KISS). Nothing is worse than a PowerPoint that is over the top, complicated or so poorly done as it is painful to sit through.  Too much going on, difficult to understand graphics or no consistency between slides, backgrounds, fonts or print size make any PowerPoint presentation worse than the old chalk and talk.  

With todays’ classroom and lecture, PowerPoint presentations have become a very standard format through which to pass on large sums of information.  At BCIT, a few instructors cling to the old ways; one still writes the entire course, day-to-day, on the board, albeit with a dry erase; another still uses acetates and an overhead; another only handouts that haven’t changed in 15 years.  For the rest of us, PowerPoint is the standard format, or to another degree, Adobe.  It is easy to build, change, modify and share with others.  Copies can be printed off for the student or just passed via a flash drive.  Quickly substituting into a class for a lecture can be straightforward and less traumatic if the current teacher has all the lectures set up on PowerPoint.  My first 6 months at BCIT were spent jumping from subject to subject as needed.  As a new instructor this could be quite stressful, having to prepare and learn new subject matter on a nightly basis.  If the instructor for whom you were substituting had everything set on a flash drive via PowerPoint, it became easy enough to review the next days’ lecture and present it to the class with a minimum of fuss.

I have no problem with and enjoy using PowerPoint, that being said it does not replace good teaching.  I try using it to supplement my class, not fill the entire thing.  I remain animated, show videos or photos, draw diagrams on the board and a variety of other techniques to keep the class alert and awake.  I use the PowerPoint as a guide for the information being presented.  It is up to the student to go find the rest of it in the assigned texts and materials.  As well, my power points are in a constant state of flux, always changing and being tweaked. What worked for one class my not be as clear for the next; new photos and diagrams are spliced in, different examples used. Keeping presentations simple can help provide the students with a base of learning.  Hopefully it provokes enough interest to stimulate the student to further pursue their own education.