Well in my opinion I believe that PowerPoint is both good and evil.  In the Marine Corps we like to say “death by PowerPoint”.  It is true that an instructor or anyone who is presenting a class or presentation can be easily persuaded to read from the same slide show that he or she might be presenting.  PowerPoint is a great tool to make any presentation visually appealing and to help keep on track whoever is using PowerPoint.  Of course, at the same time it can also overwhelm you with too much information on a single slide.

I have plenty of experience using PowerPoint.  It is what we use in the Marine Corps to give  the Commander briefs, give instructions, and all sorts of other things.  I have also had awful experiences with instructors who have given classes and presentations by reading from their slide show.  This is where the term “death by PowerPoint” comes from.  Those that do the best using PowerPoint do it by keeping the amount of information on a single slide to a minimum.  I am sure that you have experienced watching a slide show that had a slide with at least 100 words.  Why would anyone want to read that many words from a slide and who wants to hear anyone read a slide with that many words?

PowerPoint is a great tool when it is used properly to enhance any presentation.  How good is a presentation, is solely the responsibility of the person who is giving the presentation.  It is also important to keep in mind that preparing to give a presentation is the most important step before giving the presentation.  This includes preparing the slide show that will be used to give the presentation.  The presentation needs to be easy to read and should only have key points that need to be taken from the presentation.  If there is a lot of information that must be used to drive a certain point home then multiple slides should be used instead of trying to cram everything into one slide.

One of the great things about PowerPoint is that you can import almost anything that is digital into a slide show and turn it into a presentation.  There are also many templates available when using PowerPoint.  Just like anything else, the more that you use something the easier it gets to use; PowerPoint is no different.  It can get very complicated to use PowerPoint depending on what it is that you are trying to do.  There are also very complex graphics that you can create using PowerPoint.

So as mentioned in this article, PowerPoint is quickly becoming the standard for teaching.  It is the simplicity of creating a slide show and presenting it to a class that has become the standard.  Gone are the days when teaching is strictly done using the lecture method without the aid of PowerPoint or some form of media.  When I was working towards becoming an instructor, of many trades, in the Marine Corps one of the first things that I was taught was to be confident about the instruction that I was giving.  This was only possible by actually knowing the material that you are teaching.  Have teachers become less prepared to give instruction because of the use of PowerPoint?  Well, I think that it is hard to say.  There are many great teachers out there that use PowerPoint only as a tool and do not completely rely on just reading what is on their slide show to teach.  I believe that PowerPoint is a great tool that can enhance the learning experience but at the same time it can burden those that are trying to learn by inhibiting the ability to learn.