My Technoloy Tool

When reading the assignment of sharing a technological teaching tool, my initial thought was, “What tool can I positively not teach without…” Actually I can teach without anything, but I am a visual learner and I love to add as much modality to my teaching as possible.  My goal is that every type of learner will find at least some small thing that they can relate to.  If I have a white board or chalkboard, I will use that. If I don’t have those tools, I will use a piece of paper and draw connections and diagrams to illustrate my point.  So in the digital age, PowerPoint has become my chalkboard.  However, it is so ubiquitous that it has become marginalized and used in ways that does not fully realize its potential.  The program is often utilized poorly and both students and instructors tend to dread yet another “death by PPT presentation”.   Yet this is such a neglected tool, it is much like the obedient child in a large family…often overlooked and almost always underappreciated.

I think one of the essential things about all technological adaptations in education is that we truly look at what methods and tools can help accomplish the task of teaching with the tool “vanishing” and the student only being aware of what they are learning.  In user interface design, the goal is to design the technology so that the user can intuitively just perform an action and his or her objective is met.  For example, people love to look at pictures. Imagine sitting down on your sofa with a photo album in hand.  You gaze at the pictures and your hand reaches over and pulls the page over to access the next picture. You can close the book and pick up another one.  The iPad tries to give that same experience in the digital world.  The user can sit comfortably anywhere and with a swipe of the hand go from picture to picture.  Or, just by touching the book in a certain way, they can close the album and open another one.  It is so natural and intuitive that toddlers can learn to use it; the task is accomplished smoothly without the technology getting in the way.  In the same way, PowerPoint, or any other presentation tool, should be used to accomplish the instructor’s task.

Through careful design of the presentation, it can be very persuasive and help those with different learning styles to stay connected and add to the learning process.  When it is used poorly, it can detract from the learning process, even to the point of ruining the entire session and losing all the students.  It is a lot like seasoning to a dish, the right amounts make it absolutely wonderful; however, when there is too much, or used incorrectly, it can be unpalatable.

Affordance Analysis: PowerPoint

Here’s a far from exhaustive affordance analysis of the dreaded PowerPoint presentation.

AFFORDANCES:

Accessibility: To me PowerPoint’s great asset is its accessibility. PowerPoint files are påretty ubiquitous and can be opened with GoogleDocs if students don’t have the Microsoft version on their computer, which makes them sharable. You’ll find PowerPoint on most institutional computers, so it’s crazy to assign an assignment using PowerPoint. People, as a rule, don’t seem daunted by PowerPoint as a software, which is good. Basically, if you can use a word processing program and have some knowledge of file importing, you can make a pretty robust presentation. Presentations are also printable, which allows students a tangible take-away from the presentation and a place to store their notes.

Updatability: Hopefully we’re in the practice of constantly updating our teaching materials - keeping them fresh and relevant. PowerPoint’s pretty simple and easy to update.

Visibility: PowerPoint’s layouts are pretty fool proof, which makes creating easy to follow presentations a snap. Visual rhetoricians might not necessarily agree, but I think the templates make for, at minimum, legible presentations.

Multi-modal-ability (or something): For a fairly simple interface, PowerPoint allows users to do a number of sophisticated things. Users can import still images, sounds, animations, video, etc., which can make for pretty dynamic presentations. By incorporating different modalities, of course, we can reach students with different attention spans and learning styles.

DISAFFORDANCES:

Lack of Student Center-ability: I read this web article by a professor from Minnesota and he makes a good point: if one of your pedagogical standards is that students play an active and central role in the classroom dynamic, then PowerPoint might not be the most suitable technology. That’s because it’s pretty limited in the sort of interactions it encourages. Really, PowerPoint’s bread and butter is the one-to-many, presentation-style interaction which is fine. And, sure, questions can be posted on the PowerPoint to facilitate other types of interaction. But it’s not the most organic technology in the world. PowerPoint presentations solidify hierarchical structures in classrooms, which, depending on the class, could be undesirable.

Lack of Round-about-ability: PowerPoint presentations are linear by nature. Again, this is fine. But there’s something to be said about a recursive teaching or presentation style. Perhaps PowerPoint is a little limiting in the very direct way it takes a presentation from Point A to Point B. Learning very rarely happens in a straight line. In fact, it more than likely happens in loops and is recursive like writing. PowerPoint's not built for that.

Template Fatigue-ability: I doubt I’m alone in thinking that PowerPoints can be pretty boring. So many presentations cut out of the same piece of cloth. Even though PowerPoint allows for creativity, many of the key tenets of a PowerPoint are pretty predictable. I think this can lead to, among other things, students losing interest, taking parts of the presentation for granted, and generally thinking “Oh, here we go again, another boring presentation.” Even if the presentation is well made, well thought out, and interactive, it may fall victim to “guilt by association.” This might also be called stagnate-ability.

Lack of Universal Accessibility: Because it’s highly visual, PowerPoints may pose problems for people with certain disabilities like color blindness, dyslexia, vision impairment, etc. Using it as a stand alone presentation platform (or using it without consideration of its possible impediments) could lead to an unfair learning environment.

SUMMARY:

PowerPoint is a pretty valuable and dynamic piece of software, but I think it’s safe to say that it has to be used judiciously and in harmony with your teaching and learning goals. From a practical vantage point it has some pretty important affordances, but those affordances have to be weighed against the possible risks. One way to conceptualize the use of PowerPoins in classrooms is to think of it in terms of form and function - always placing function before form. I think there’s a tendency to fall back of PowerPoint because it’s so easy and quick to create professional, crisp-looking presentations. But, ease of use has led to many a bad teaching technique (WORKSHEETS anyone?). PowerPoint should only be deployed, in my opinion, if it fits correctly into your predetermined interaction grid and should not be utilized as a quick-fix.

Readings I looked at:
1. http://www.mnsu.edu/cetl/teachingresources/articles/rebuttaltopowerpoint.html
2. http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol2/beej-2-3.aspx
3. http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/9705/creed_1.htm

Photo Courtesy of Flickr user MattHurst