PowerPointing the way to the end of teaching »
Better stupefied by a slideshow than a paid professor, though, right? The use of PowerPoint seems to be an expression of diffidence on the part of the teacher regarding his oratorical skills: there must be something I can replace as the focal point of class — anything but me! The rhetorical craft that is the teacher’s first and most reliable aide in capturing his students’ imaginations is replaced by pointing and reading. By neglecting the cultivation of this difficult skill, we make teaching a profession open to all — even those who dislike it and lack any aptitude for it.
I have a deep and profound loathing for PowerPoint presentations, and I routinely dare to imagine that I am charismatic enough to capture people’s attention for a half hour or so. During my tenure as the ed-in-chief of my school’s newspaper, I wrote the following op-ed:
The Classroom as Spectacle
Sensing that the human voice is no longer adequate to deliver a lecture, and desperate to boost their ratings among a youthful demographic, the savviest of professors now rely on Powerpoint to do their classroom bidding. With each passing lecture comes the further maturation of technological proficiency within the pedagogic avant-garde.
Having evolved from monotonous and seemingly endless slideshows composed entirely of text, Powerpoint-lectures now appear naked unless ornately burdened with a curious mixture of transition effects that lack all subtlety and purloined images from the pen of Gary Larson. Still, the evolution is incomplete. Just recently, one brave professor dared to raise the bar that much higher by boldly experimenting with an irrelevant video-clip whose educational purpose shall forever remain unknown.
Watching our professors become awestruck in the presence of an arsenal of high-tech gadgets is akin to watching a babble of wide-eyed children tremble at the sight of the latest offerings from Mattel. In both instances one finds the same fanatical belief that, finally!, everything has changed and now anything is possible. Granted, new possibilities have emerged, most notable among them the potential for an electronic faux pas.
Remember this: In all Powerpoint-dependant lectures—no matter how well scripted—there is that inevitable, awkward moment when the professor, unwittingly captivated by the computerized spectacle of their own creation, confuses the skill of the software with that of their own.
