From Now On - Jamie McKenzie
The Educational Technology Journal
 Vol 10|No 1|September|2000

PowerPointlessness - original article

Antidotes for Powerpoint Poisoning

1.  Emphasize Ideas & Logic

Presentations should be more about ideas than flash.

2. Provide Sufficient Evidence - Maintain Depth and Complexity

The slide presentation is like the tip of an iceberg

3. Supplement Slides with Text & Data

If we think of PowerPoint™ slides as visual summaries of findings to supplement an oral presentation, we would expect to see accompanying such slides a carefully constructed essay or argument developed in a word processor, laying out the key ideas in considerable detail and depth.

Design Artfully

1. Consider Audience

Who will be sitting out there? What are their needs? Their preferences? Their attitudes?

How much do they already know? How much background is needed? Is there a real mix of styles so that multiple presentation strategies are required?

How much vocabulary can they handle and at what level of difficulty?

2. Eliminate Distractions

3. Select Powerful Images

4. Distill Words

Slides are meant to share main ideas, phrases and key points.

Slides should rarely offer more than a dozen words each.

Students should prepare to speak concisely and effectively to a group about the ideas represented by the slides. They should not read the slides to the group.

5. Honor Criteria

Harmony

 How well do the elements (ideas, images, sounds, etc.) fit together? Are they resonant? dovetailed? matching? coherent? congruent?

Proportion

 Is the scale or relative importance of the elements in keeping with their importance?

Do big ideas appear in larger fonts than details?

Is the size of the graphic appropriate in relationship to the words?

Templates - because they allocate a certain amount of space for text and a certain amount of graphics - can sometimes skew the emphasis placed on one part of the slide. Inserting images into predefined spaces tends to expand them to fill all available space. Students should decide how big these items should be in advance and should give them the space on the page their value warrants.

Restraint

 Have various devices and special effects been used judiciously so as to contribute to meaning? Do choices of fonts and styles match intention?

Originality

 Do the slides, the design and the ideas show signs of personal style and inventiveness? Or do they suffer from same-old, same-old, template design? Do the pages seem hastily constructed with a slap-dash, cut-and-paste approach? Or can we see a devotion to thoughtful, intentional design?

6. Deliver Dramatically

  • Maintain Eye Contact
  • Avoid Reading Slides Aloud
  • Speak with Conviction