How to Prevent PowerPoint From Ruining Your Lesson or Presentation

7 February 2010 | 13 Comments » | Aaron Eyler

There are any number of blog posts that discuss this topic, but I figured I would put my own up and join the fun.

The easy way to prevent PowerPoint from ruining a lesson is simple: just don’t use it. Realize quickly that PowerPoint often detracts from the more important message that you are trying to share with students. In his book “Brain Rules”, Dr. John Medina discusses why teachers need to learn why pictures grab attention and stimulate the minds in ways that words do not. He provides a great explanation of this process. The brain doesn’t see “words” it sees pictures of letters that then translate into words as a learned response (this is very much the “Twitter” version).

More importantly, he explains why PowerPoint is usually  a terrible learning mechanism and how “professionals everywhere need to know the about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images.”

It cracks me up when I hear of teachers standing at the front of the room lecturing from a PowerPoint (which usually means reading the slides) and then consider it engaging when they ask a question about the slide to the class. Then they get mad when students don’t know the answer to the question. Maybe the kids knew the answer to the question? Maybe they heard what you were saying, but instead of being able to focus and think critically about the question you present, they were busy scribbling down the encyclopedia you put on the slide? (By the way, when you shake your head in disgust and move on to the next slide that doesn’t mean they learned the material either.) For those of you that print the slides out with the little lines next to them: the kids stopped listening as soon as the kid in front of them passed the paper back.

If teachers are so attached to their PowerPoint presentations (they shouldn’t be) then it is important to implement the following measures:

  1. STOP reading off the slides: it makes YOU look like a moron.
  2. Start cutting down on the words so that you get as close to “0″ as possible: less is more here.
  3. Start putting more pictures on the slide and, if possible, use animation instead.
  4. Stop handing out the slides with the little lines next to them.

I also suggest that the same type of strategy be implemented for using new tools like Prezi. Just because the platform zips around in circles and spins doesn’t mean that reading 50 words straight is engaging no matter how interesting you think the information is for the audience.

Enjoy the Super Bowl.