Among academic bloggers, yet another battle is raging in the PowerPoint wars.
Margaret Soltan, English professor and the venerable curmudgeon of University Diaries, links to a student’s blog to show how PowerPoint enables and encourages shoddy teaching.
Fellow English professor Alan Jacobs agrees, pointing to students’ sense of entitlement that results from PowerPoint.
Jonathan Rees, professor of history, puts the blame for bad presentations on textbook publishers.
Historian Timothy Burke defends the judicious use of PowerPoint, with suggestions for using it well.
Chad Orzel, a physicist, ponders how best to use PowerPoint, for both in-class lectures and later review.
Physicist Julianne Dalcanton offers a neat tip to solve Chad’s dilemma.
And English professor Scott Eric Kaufman lightheartedly warns of the dangers of putting students in charge of PowerPoint.
What are the benefits and pitfalls of using PowerPoint for library instruction? How can you integrate it with other presentation tools?
I’m an online student in Drexel U.’s MS(LIS) program. For better or worse, all of my instructors so far have used PowerPoint as their primary tool for online “lectures.” The best use of PP by far has been a screen cast with slides and voice-over from the professor. At it’s worst, PP allows professors to post their face-to-face class visual aids online without the context of their verbal lecture, resulting in rather cryptic (and useless!) online lecture content.