PowerPoint and Its Power to Point

As Adams (2006) put it, PowerPoint users might come to develop certain ways of doing things and patterns of behaviors and thinking, namely, becoming habituated with this software (p.394). This proposition somehow spells out my expectations for conference presentations; that is, they must be PowerPoint-enhanced. Ever since PowerPoint came into the picture, a number of the speakers in conferences waved goodbye to the old OHP transparencies in favor of this new technology, which I guess might be the result of several reasons. For one thing, it provides visual/audio reinforcement of oral information to the audience, helping them make better sense of the information. For another, it frees presenters from the manual changing of the transparencies and as such puts them in a better position to focus their attention mainly on conveying their ideas. Thus, due to this vast popularity of PowerPoint in conferences, my expectation that PowerPoint is a must for conference presentations kicked in and gradually became habituated. In fact, in the conference just held by my program (FLE) during this past weekend, I participated in several presentations, all of which were mediated by the use of PowerPoint as a presenting tool. And to come to think of it, I totally took this PowerPoint enhancement thing for granted. In fact, I guess I would definitely have felt less comfortable and even somewhat upset if the PowerPoint enhancement had been absent. This idea really stroke me as surprising for I’ve never known I’ve been habituated by the technology this much. Speaking of conference presentations facilitated by the employment of PowerPoint, I have ever experienced several ones that made use of PowerPoint in such a way that everyone present wished the speaker would just give them the ppt file and get it over with. One of the speakers read from the slides word by word without supplying any additional information. Another speaker skipped so many bullet points in each of the slides that a holistic understanding of the study became next to impossible. Still, not unlike the incongruous PowerPoint lecture discussed in Adams (2006), another speaker presented information somewhat different from the one projected onto the screen, making it rather difficult and confusing for the audience to establish any connection. However, honestly speaking, I feel glad that I’ve experienced these leaving-a-lot-to-be-desired presentations since they brought to my attention some problems that I should go out of my way to avoid while preparing my own PowerPoint presentations.

In her article, Adams (2006) contended that as a user seizes hold of PowerPoint as a tool for presenting information, “he or she necessarily begins to think in terms of the form it suggests.” (p. 394) And the form that PowerPoint suggests concerns titling each slide, abbreviating subject materials, and bulleting points. The way I see it, Powerpoint bears much resemblance with an overhead projector in regard to these features. In other words, presenters aided by an overhead projector would also need to entitle each transparency, abbreviate materials, as well as to bullet the points. Yet, a major difference between these 2 types of presentation facility representing the pre-computer and post-computer era consists in PowerPoint’s preference over information able to fit in a single projected 4:3 rectangular, which necessarily disadvantages and in turn renders obsolete the (narrative) texts calling forth more space to display. This is exactly the feature of PowerPoint that put me in a rather difficult situation as I tried to compose the slides for my presentation in the conference last weekend. In that presentation, I needed to show the audience a preview passage that spanned one A4-sized page in an attempt to help them get a better idea about what a previewing treatment gets at. However, I found it impossible to fit that one-page preview onto the 4:3 rectangular allowed by PowerPoint and ended up breaking the preview passage into 2 fragmented slides. I felt really upset in doing so, for the idea of a preview taking ONLY a one-page space so pivotal to my study was somehow lost from making it last for 2 slides. Picture 1 below pertains to the one-page preview whereas Picture 2 and Picture 3 depict the 2-slide preview, the fragmented one.



Picture 1



Picture 2



Picture 3













As for the use of PowerPoint as a presentation tool in the classroom, Adams (2006) argued teachers seem to “settle into the easiest, most accessible, efficient path and seldom thinking to diverge from it.” (p. 395) To put it another way, while using PowerPoint, they would rely on the AutoContent Wizard to construct their teaching presentations and stay tuned ever after. As a teacher myself, I surmise that this might be accounted for by several reasons. First of all, teachers might not feel the need to switch or venture any new format because the messages/content conveyed through the PowerPoint file constructed following AutoContent Wizard had been well-received and understood by students. Plus, when the format serves only as a medium to convey the messages, teachers might be convinced that the choosing of the messages should take precedence. Additionally, the time constraint might also play a part in the process. In sum, while experimenting with the new formats would no doubt be exciting and exhilarating, these practical concerns might have underlied some teachers’ decision as to sticking to the simpler template.