my anti-powerpoint campaign continues

[SF & P Webb]

Technology is a tool, but a tool is not a friend and is often a rival. Unlike your audience, machines don't wish you well. Use as few gizmos as possible, and then check everything to be sure everything's in working order. Don't try out a complex set of visuals for the first time when giving an important lecture. Consider, too, that some great lecturers don't want any visuals at all, since those lovely pictures in a darkened room draw attention away from the speaker herself. (By the way, if you're speaking in a room with a blackboard, be sure to erase it clean. If your lecture begins to falter, your audience may focus instead on chalk scribbles and what they can remember of quadratic equations or the Russian patronymics in Dostoyevsky.)

PowerPoint is for sissies. All right, not for sissies, exactly, but it's being done to death. PowerPoint Makes Everything Really Important in a Telegraphic Way. That's Fine in Some Cases, But It Gets Tiring When It Happens Too Much. Besides, PowerPoint is the triumph of the quick "fact" over the art of argumentation. And a lecture is, or should be, a kind of argument. It's more, too -- a chance to observe a voice, a body, a brain, and a personality engaging an audience with similar interests. If you put your bulleted ideas up on slides, your audience will look at the slides, not at you. You'll also be teaching them that What You Have to Say Can Be Summarized in a Few Words. Can it?

http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i14/14b01501.htm