Rightly Understood | Big Think: So we live in a time when we look for wisdom from mega-entrepreneurs. I admit that they’re usually really smart and fascinating--not to say full of contradictions. Peter Thiel, for one, tells talented young people to skip college and get right down to entrepreneuring, while at the same time being convinced of the enduring relevance for his business and personal life of the philosophers Rene Girard and Leo Strauss--both of whom he learned about in college.
3 comments:
Not to be rude.. But I humbly disagree. Powerpoint, just like every other form of communication, is just another tool and medium for doing the same thing. Some tools are better suited for some things and not so much for others. And like every tool, there's room for abuse and misuse. But to write off Powerpoint entirely as useless is silly and ignorant. That's not to say that there are not plenty of bad powerpoint presentations, because we've all seen them and suffered through horrible presentations.
If an effective presentation is all about painting a "coherent narrative", then the tools employed shouldn't matter if they are the best for the job! It just depends!
As a former professor, I also disagree with this article. It is about getting a cohesive narrative around a powerpoint structure. Most teachers used to use a lesson plan with bullet points to keep their narrative complete and I think that a powerpoint can keep your lecture on task and emphasize the important information. The idea of writing a narrative outline of each class to keep the lesson cohesive and more well thought out is great but having a visual component for emphasis is great. It also depends on the subject matter as to the usefulness of powerpoint. When doing my stagecraft lecture on tools having a visual aid was a necessity and it was very helpful when discussing materials. During my stage lighting class having visual reference photos to demonstrate the qualities of light was essential. Powerpoint when well made will have the ability to foster discussion and class debate.
I think that teachers do kinda do this already. Whenever I am given a reading assignment for class I usually come in afterwards and that is the class discussion for the day. In addition, I either have to take a quiz or write a blog post about this information that I gleaned from the reading and this can be correlated to the synthesizing of information that is required to write the 6 page memo. I think Powerpoints are not necessary to teach class (although they are great to study from), I also think a lot of times students will spend a lot of time writing down what exactly is on the Powerpoint when they could be actually listening, processing, and thinking about the information.
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