PowerPoint seems to be a popular teaching aid. After all, it saves lots of messy writing on the board or the use of boring overhead projectors. And who doesn’t enjoy bulleted lists swooshing on screen complete with sound effects and little clipart stick figures?
I don’t.
I spend a lot of time watching teachers do what they do. You might say I’ve become a connoisseur of teaching; I have a tendency to dissect how teachers operate and to work out what makes them so good (or bad) at what they do. What’s the biggest trait shared by bad teachers? Excessive PowerPoint usage.
There are, of course, different styles of PowerPoint usage, each with its merits and failures:
- The Outline: This presentation outlines what the teacher will be explaining and perhaps offers some useful pictures or equations. It’s the best form of PowerPoint in that it’s actually helpful.
- The Summary: Makes a vague attempt at summarizing the topic. Slightly more detailed than The Outline, but infinitely worse. It often lures teachers into reading the slides and giving little or no additional information. It’s rather hard to learn from a summary.
- The Script: If you’re going to read the slide verbatim, why not just print it out and let the students read it themselves? It’d be easier.
Your average teacher tends to fall in either of the last two methods. I’ve found that while The Script is downright boring (I can read, thank you very much), The Summary is the worst and potentially the most damaging of the methods. Why?
Well, it’s a summary. Imagine you’re being taught about chemical equilibrium. The teacher presents the slideshow (conveniently provided by the textbook publisher), reads out the concepts, and perhaps adds a few nuggets of elaboration. You understand the concepts and you think you’re ready to approach it on your own. Here, have a worksheet.
BAM. Gotcha! You were just taught the summary. Now you get to do the problems. And the summary left out certain important details… (No, I’m not bitter.)
I propose we ban PowerPoint from schools as a teacher’s crutch and demand that they get by with real teaching. Like this guy.
I’d say Powerpoint is useful for stuff that talking can’t manage, and not much more. Diagrams, long equations, stuff that might be written on the board etcetera etcetera.