The Cognitive Style of Power Point

I wrote this blog entry once before but accidently deleted without a backup.  I will try to capture what I said the first time in this entry. 

In his chapter “The Cognitive Style of Power Point: Pitching Out Corrupts Within” from Beautiful Evidence (September, 2003) Edward Tufte lays out an argument that Power Point (PP) is not content oriented or audience oriented (p. 158). There were many points made in this chapter by Tufte that I agree with as a teacher. 

One argument that Tufte makes is that PP “reduces the intellectual level of the content passing through the system” (p. 158). I completely agree with this statement.  Even at the middle school level I have found that when students use PP to present their learnings they don’t fully understand the information they have put on their slides. Why is this? I believe it is because students have become very good at pulling out facts from a textbook and putting then into a bullet point slide with out really thinking about those facts and the importance of the facts to their research questions.  

It is for this reason that I have banned PP from my classroom. Instead I like to give students a bucket list of software choices that they can choose from when it comes time to make a multimedia product in my classroom. This list usually includes software such as Comic Life, iWeb, GarageBand, MediaBlender, and Pages to name a few.  I think these software options allow students to create products that lead higher levels of thinking.  For example if students are making a podcast one of the requirements is that they write a script. When writing a script students have to take their research information and analyze and synthesie it in order for the script to make sense.

Power Point is a boring presentation tool.  Below I have attached two examples of poems that my students wrote using Comic Life.  I think it easy for people to see why I had the students use Comic Life and not PP to present their poems.  These poems are much more engaging and interesting to look at than a Power Point slide.

 

I do disagree some with Tufte when he says that “it is scandalous that there is no coherent software for serious presentations” (p. 183).  This might be true in the business world, but in the school setting I have found that there are plenty of other tools for students to use to create presentations.  Should schools be teaching PP any more? Who knows, but for me and my classes we are going to focus on different tools that promote critical thinking and engagement.