June 23, 2008
Personal Story
Ah, the PowerPoint lecture.
As a tech teacher you’d think I’d be completely enamoured with PowerPoint presentations. All the glitz and glam at the click of a button. But, as a SPED teacher I feel they are often abused and misused and not utilized in a way that is conducive to sound learning. And I am secretly plotting their takeover, one LCD projector at a time.
My, er… issues… have come from my experiences. Allow me to explain.
I took a seminar for credit once at a local community college. It was all pretty new material to me and content I am still interested in. In each class the content information was presented in bold black letters on a big, white, 6′ x 6′ screen. Each day of the seminar I sat in my chair as the teacher(s) read from their PowerPoint, bullet after bullet, line after line, at a standard reading speed with few breaks. As they whizzed through the bullets I was usually frantically scribbling my notes, trying to capture, at the very least, the important words in each bullet before they moved on to the next slide.
I found, to my confusion, that I was hardly ever writing the same bullet that the teacher was speaking about as they spoke about it; I was always a bit behind or frantically trying to get ahead so I was prepared when they clicked to the next slide. My mind would be split between what I was writing and what I was hearing. There were occasional moments of twittering excitement when the teacher(s) veered away from the LCD screen to ask a question or expand on a bulleted point. But afterwards, conscious of time, they would whirl through the next bullets even faster to make up for their divergence. Unfortunately, the teacher(s) did not print out the PowerPoints ahead of time… when I asked if I could get a copy before the day’s seminar they responded, ”I don’t provide them ahead of time because then there would be no reason for students to come to the seminar; they’d just get the PowerPoint offline and not come. And during class I don’t want to waste the paper.”
The result was that during class I was hardly ever able to gather my thoughts enough to listen to the teacher(s) expanding questions, let alone think about an answer. I was hardly ever finished gathering information from a screen before they moved on. And I can not think of more than a handful of times when I was able to actually digest what they were talking about and commit it to partial understanding.
In the end the class content is a blur to me. I am a smart, savvy woman, or so I like to think. I want to learn about the topic so I can use it in the future but I was unable to grasp more than a superficial understanding of the content in the format it was presented. I felt bad. I feel dumb. I did learn a bit after the hours of the class when I could gather all the info around me and… just… think… for a moment. But that was when no one was around to answer my clarifying questions or reflect on my thoughts. The PowerPoints were so packed with bulleted lists and information that they were like reading a tech manual. So I am unsure if I got it right and actually pulled out the important points. I took the class but I don’t feel educated.
Now, I’m ready to found my own organization — People for the Effective Use of PowerPoints, (PEUP). And I’m ready to think long and hard about the concepts of Universal Design in Learning and how I can learn to use PowerPoint in a way that enhances the many, diverse learning styles of my students, including ones like me.
Join PEUP. Slowly we can take over the world… one LCD projector at a time.
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June 24th, 2008 at 2:58 am
OK, I have to share these two things with you: http://www.davidairey.com/how-not-to-use-powerpoint/ and http://www.aera.net/uploadedFiles/Journals_and_Publications/Journals/Educational_Researcher/Volume_33_No_4/ERv33n4_Weinburg.pdf.
June 24th, 2008 at 3:05 am
I’m thinking thaWell, we know that presentation software (of some kind) is here to say. Maybe if the instructor had posted the information online, she could have added some very cool hyperlinks. Then, when you had a few minutes to yourself to consider the mile-a-minute verbatim reading of the slides, at least you could click and explore examples and background context! That would be a beginning for supporting students’ diverse recognition networks by providing multiple, flexible means of representation…
June 26th, 2008 at 10:27 am
So man professors do this (avoiding paper and doing the powerpoint thing). This is where technology scares me a little. What’s going to happen to us note takers? I need a notepad!!! I need to write!!! I also think there are tons of ways the professor could have ensured attendance.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Jen ~
I’ve seen you juggle a million responsiblities this week so I trust you implicity to chair the new PowerPoint organization. I’m signing up. How is it possible that we have all grown so weary of its abuse? I’ve seen students use it for a poetry slam and their presentations knocked my socks off. Certainly glad I had odor eaters in my shoes that day! I say let the students leaad the way if at all possible rather than distort or diminish their creativity with feeble attempts to teach what comes more naturally to them! I certainly don’t want my students picking up my PowerPoint style!
Peggy
June 29th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Jen…
Yes, how unfortunate that in 2008 we still have so many folks using Powerpoint like a lecture. I’ve been challenged myself over the past several years to try and be more creative in how I use or, even consider not using them. In defense of many instructors however, so many have never had good instruction on how to use these tools, let alone infuse creative digital techniques. I encourage you to look at Marc Prensky’s work, http://www.marcprensky.com/, I think you’ll find him and his cause appealing! I watched him deliver a presentation at a state VSTE conference several years ago….few bulleted slides and more slides with a single link, a single image, a single thought…and provoking a lot of conversation and consideration.