I mentioned yesterday that I'm working on My First Powerpoint.
Well! Having spent several hours today putting together twelve slides, I conclude the following:
1. Powerpoint is awesome.
2. Powerpoint is a phenomenal time-suck.
Irreconcilable? Perhaps. Nonetheless, true. I feel so accomplished today, having put together my twelve slides! And now [the first half of] my talk feels so organized! With pictures! Pretty!
Pray for me, though, people: pray that I do not become That Person who reads from the slides and doesn't seem to remember why she dropped in the materials she did. Pray hard. I'm in danger.
4 comments:
PPT is a time and energy suck. It seduces you into doing all the bad stuff - transitions, animations, text. Twelve slides = 75 words. Prompts, not narration. Remember all the hellish ones you've sat through; your mantra is 'prompts, not narrative...'
Prayers to all attending deities.
I refuse animation! I refuse transitions! My background is pale yellow, with no effects. But by God every damn thing is in Garamond, you'd better believe it.
I absolutely agree with your irreconcilable conclusions. This year I put on ppt slides all the stuff I would have wasted time scrawling on the board, plus images. My board-handwriting was always bad and has become atrocious.
For a talk I did in March, I did a dedicated blog for the talk, with each slide as a separate post, so that the material was available after my talk. Given that I know blogger better than ppt, it was simpler, AND I could edit it from any computer with internet access...
And it was a total time suck!
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