I just saw the slide on my iPhone and can confirm that it is just as 
incomprehensible in that format. Maybe the problem is compressing so much 
information into a single graphic. If the point was to communicate the complex 
quagmire that is Afghanistan, the graphic is very effective. As a tool of 
understanding the details, it might well be improved by breaking it up into 
numerous slides or even creating a web page with such a concept map linked to 
more detail on the various points (if you don't want to cover them linearly).


Rick

Rick Froman
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

On Apr 27, 2010, at 6:44 AM, "Beth Benoit" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:




But the "slide" that's shown in the story is a "mind map" diagram - it doesn't 
really have anything to do with PowerPoint except maybe the person who shows it 
could use PowerPoint to display it.

I did agree with the point made in the later part of the story that sitting 
through a PowerPoint presentation can be "just agony" because the person 
presenting may just put up the slide and read it.  BUT a person can do the same 
thing with a transparency, with writing on the board, or just reading notes.

Beth Benoit
Granite State College
Plymouth State University
New Hampshire

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 7:28 AM, Mike Palij 
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I'm not a fan of powerpoint and prefer to see actual text that
especially when explain complex, interrelated concepts.  The
military has come to the same conclusion as reported in this
article by the NY Times with the now infamous "spaghetti"
slide of U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan;  see:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?th&emc=th>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?th&emc=th

Quoting from the article, here is where the evil lies:

|“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine
|Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military
|conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.)
|Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations
|when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of
|Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening
|PowerPoint to an internal threat.
|
|“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding
|and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone
|interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

But do not be of the opinion that Powerpoint is without utility.  As
the military makes clear in the following quote:

|Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal
|is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters.

Perhaps this should give teachers who use powerpoints in class
some pause.

-Mike Palij
New York University
<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>


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