Extreme Makeover: PowerPoint Edition


Ben Wildboer shows how he used some ideas he found online (including some from yours truly!) to upgrade a slide deck about basic Earth structure. His blog post includes an “Extreme Makeover” like before and after look at his entire slide deck.

Ben’s immediate observation distills everything I’ve been trying to convey as succinctly as I’ve seen it done:

There were several students that expressed regret at the demise of the bullet points. It’s easier for them to just copy down exactly what it says (of course it is, they don’t have to actually pay attention or comprehend to do that). How well they’ve been trained by their past experiences!

Ah yes. Undoing years of damage done by the ubiquitous bullet point. Challenging, to say the least. But definitely a battle worth fighting.

Go check out Ben’s slide decks. And the rest of his blog while you’re there. He’s off to a great start!!

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February 13th, 2008
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Mathew
Posted on:
February 14, 2008 at 12:06 am

Certainly bullet points are overused in powerpoint.

However, I wonder if we have swung the pendulum too far the other way. Not to have any bullet points at all could be a disservice (depending on the subject of the presentation).

In your presentation on presentations I didn’t fell like I needed any bullet points. In a presentation on the crust of the earth (not my field) it might benefit me to have a few key points bulleted to emphasize what the speaker is saying…not complete sentences but just words or phrases, chunks of info I’d remember best if I could see it and hear it at the same time.

These decisions should be made on a case by case basis but I hope we’re not throwing out all bullet points just because they’ve been used so horribly in the past.

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
Scott Elias
Posted on:
February 14, 2008 at 8:47 am

I think in this case, Mathew, that the bullet point is merely a metaphor for all things evil about PowerPoint. The bullet point in and of itself is not the thing that is bad, rather the fact that the out-of-the-box templates that are the default in PPT and Keynote just beg us to turn our slides into a mess of bullet points and tiny text.

In fact, I advocate the use of words and phrases as they do a very effective job of reinforcing key content.

It surely depends on the context of the presentation, but I do advocate minimizing to the extent possible the amount of text on any one slide as it detracts from the speaker and oversimplifies the content.

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
Pat
Posted on:
February 23, 2008 at 6:08 am

What a great post! Now I’m embarrassed about all the powerpoints I’ve done. After seeing these examples, I know that my next ones have to be much better! Thanks for sharing this.