People get far too emotional over some elements of Powerpoint. "Bullets" seem to have become synonymous with "mind-numbing" or "evil," but I use them when I have lists or rankings or summaries to present. Most often, I click a button and simply turn them off. I also don't believe that trying to fit text on Powerpoint slides is significantly more constraining than trying to write the material quickly on a small remaining sliver of blackboard while not erasing your meticulously drawn graph...
For the most part, it's not the text/outlining functions of Powerpoint that interest me... it's the "multimedia" capabilities. After years of shifting between writing notes on the blackboard, using handouts for detailed information, presenting cartoons or graphs or stimuli on an overhead, and showing videos on televisions, I love the fact that I can embed and control all of these in one platform.
In a presentation on sensation, for example, I can show micrographs of rods and cones in the retina, display graphs of dark adaptation curves, flip back and forth between photos illustrating normal vs. anomalous color vision, play Flash animations of a radar screen to illustrate signal detection theory, demonstrate illusions or afterimages, show Quicktime video clips to explain motion cues in depth perception, play audio clips to illustrate sounds of particular frequencies, etc... all without changing carts/cables/screens/remotes. I don't have good data on the effect of these multimedia capabilities on student outcomes, only subjective feedback(class ratings) concerning their reactions to the presentations (they seem to approve). Neither do I really know how much time this saves me, on the average, but it subjectively 'feels' liberating.
There has been much discussion of the impact of Powerpoint on student learning, and rightly so. But for me, an additional factor to be considered is _my_ emotional reaction to using these kinds of tools... which has rekindled my interest in reviewing and redesigning my lectures.
(I should mention that I'm using "Powerpoint" as a generic term for this kind of software. It's hard to believe, but non-Microsoft alternatives exist. I actually like the "look and feel" of other programs better... Apple's Keynote presentation software, for example, is gorgeous.)
Charles Perdue Psychology Department WV State College [EMAIL PROTECTED] 304.766.3271
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