Matthias Poehm, founder of the Anti-PowerPoint Party, claims that €350bn could be saved globally each year by ditching the scourge of public speaking. Poehm believes that the software takes people away from their work and teaches them little. "There is a solution," he says. "A flipchart."
I'm all for it. PowerPoint,and the other presentation applications, limit discussion, hinder digressions, and force the presentation to be delivered in the order of the slides. The effects and videos that have become de rigueur because of Powerpoint have, too often, replaced real subject knowledge and content. The winner of the argument is now, too often, the one with the grooviest animations, not the one with the most compelling facts and conclusions.
In instruction, teachers talk about the "teachable moment", that moment when the ear is ready for the message to be heard. If that message is eighteen slides away... too bad, eh?
I don't have data on this, but I suspect that Powerpoint has also changed the way we learn. It may be that we need (or at least expect) bullet points, animations, and visual jokes in a classroom now. (I also remember too many presentations with all music, all the time. Yes, it proves you're both hip and tech-savvy... but it doesn't get your point across.)
But a political party? A government ban?
Naah.
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