Have you looked lately at the way that teachers in schools have been using presentation software for teaching? Do most of them look cluttered and uninspiring? Do they look like nothing more than just digitized notes instead of paper notes with the occasional graphics thrown in?

In my view, when you see a lot of this, then it is not only because the teachers do not know basics of good design but it reflects a deeper affliction among teachers in schools if you like. “Death by PowerPoint” is really the result of how teachers see teaching and learning.

The fact that their presentations usually bear a  lot of text is a reflection of the state of mind of the teachers doing them. In their mind, they see teaching as just the delivery of information. Since the examinations-based syllabi that they probably based their teaching on is heavy, the information that present tends to be overwhelming too. Just get it through and “cover” the syllabus hence we see the piling of information on single slides. What you see on screen are likely to be just rehashed versions of the textbooks. There is little time for concept building or to linger on big and important ideas.

On the other hand if the teacher is concerned with the teaching of concepts, the slides would appear differently. You are likely to see more thought put into the slides and their arrangement. The teacher would be aware that they should be communicating what Nancy Duarte (2008) says are ideas rather than just slides. They will know that their presentation is to get their audience thinking. With that in mind, the teacher will try and build concepts using multiple slides. The teacher will used meaningful and effective graphics. Text used will be very selective and impactful. Teachers must not allow themselves to become cicumscribed by the tools they used. If teachers allow their pesentations to be more deaths by PowerPoint then they have, as Thoreau says, “become the tool of our tools.”

Some of us may remember (you have to be fairly old now) that Disney movie, “The Love Bug” (1968) which featured an old beat-up Volkswagen Beetle “race” car with a life of its own. It was so immensely popular that there has been a few follow-up movies since the original. The common thread in all these Love Bug movies was the ability of this old, far from fearsome race Beetle, to beat more powerful race machines. The Love Bug movies are typical underdog movies that American audience loves.

The Beetle (“he” is called Herbie) in the Love Bug movies reminds me a lot of PowerPoint, the much maligned software from a  much criticized software giant. PowerPoint has often been criticized among presentation software users (see here, here and here as  examples). The phrase, “Death by PowerPoint” is quite commonly heard these days too in the corporate boardrooms. This pooh-poohing of PowerPoint as a teaching tool occurs at the school level too, including in Singapore.

I remember a time when I was a consultant for the Master Plan for IT in Education (MPITE) of the Ministry of Education (MOE) of Singapore, that some school principals did not consider the use of PowerPoint by teachers in lessons as examples of ICT integration. This, I believe, caused a lot of difficulties for teachers in Singapore who are just beginning to be introduced to the world of ICT integration for education. This is not to mention that many of these same Singapore school principals themselves are not able to string together a decent PowerPoint presentation on their own. What more with using more sophisticated ICT tools!

If we are followers of Marshall McLuhan, then we will also be aware that any medium that we use, can have an effect on us because technology has that ability to “extend” or “amputate” our abilities(see this related article about how Google affects us) .

Yet despite all that criticism, PowerPoint is still well-loved for various reasons. This may be because most computer users in the  world are Windows-based. Still, despite all its short-comings, perceived or true, PowerPoint will be around for quite awhile. There are many ways one can improve the PowerPoint presentations that we use (see ZaidLearn’s PowerPoint bookmarks here for many suggestions). Too put it simply, just don’t be a slave to PowerPoint and become dependent on its templates. You don’t even need fancy transitions for a good lesson to take place with PowerPoint.

I remember I have used PowerPoint to teach History in Singapore schools and I have had students who usually are disinterested wanting to move their chairs and even sitting on the floor to be closer to the screen and the sound source during my lessons. As an example, I used to show lots of pictures of the last Tsar, to give my students an idea of what he represented (or at least he tried to present himself) to his subjects then. I did my best then not to teach from the textbooks. I would simply show the Tsar in his military uniforms and would ask my students questions about him. Why did he wear military uniforms? I would show a painting of his coronation (there is also a video footage of his coronation) and ask them to study the painting and asked them who was present and why. Or why he placed the crown on his own head. I would also show a painting of him blessing his kneeling soldiers at a battlefield during World War I and ask my students why was he doing that. I would also show them the lyrics of the Tsarist anthem and play the actual anthem and ask them about the music. What kind of music did it remind them of? Why? I would ask them to study the lyrics too and ask them what they can learn about the Tsar from it. Just simply doing these with PowerPoint and asking good questions would get my students thinking about the Tsar. They become actively involved in the presentation. They construct their knowledge through making inferences and using other thinking skills. The teachers job is to ask them questions and get them to think. Here ICT is integrated into the lesson and thinking skills is infused into the lesson with the help of good ICT use.

For a teacher, it is still good teaching methodology, assisted and enhanced by a piece of technology, the multimedia capability of PowerPoint, that is going to win the day. PowerPoint only becomes bad only if we put PowerPoint first and then adapt our teaching to what we think PowerPoint can do. It is made worse if we use the standard templates and use them like a crutch. Like Herbie, The Love Bug, despite all its apparent deficiencies and beat-up appearance compared to the newer kids on the block, PowerPoint, the underdog of presentation software today, is still much loved and is here to stay for awhile more. It can still have its day, if placed in the hands of the right person.