{"id":999,"date":"2007-04-04T09:20:17","date_gmt":"2007-04-04T14:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=999"},"modified":"2007-04-04T09:20:17","modified_gmt":"2007-04-04T14:20:17","slug":"on-the-perils-of-powerpoint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=999","title":{"rendered":"On the Perils of PowerPoint"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can’t tell you how many presentations I’ve been to over the years–at work and elsewhere–that have been delivered via PowerPoint. Usually, when EB Games<\/a> rolled out a new program, managers would come and watch\/listen to a PowerPoint presentation for an hour or two. And while I’d be with it completely for the first five or ten minutes, I’d lose the thread as the presentation continued. I couldn’t concentrate. I’d lose the details.<\/p>\n

I always wondered why that was. Where had my concentration gone? Surely, the way the information was being presented–a visual component on a projector, a presenter verbally reinforcing the information–should have kept my attention from flagging.<\/p>\n

A study done in Australia has the answer. The human brain isn’t set up to process information like that<\/a>. “[T]he brain is limited in the amount of information it can absorb – and presenting the same information in visual and verbal form – like reading from a typical Powerpoint slide – overloads this part of memory and makes absorbing information more difficult.”<\/p>\n

The Australian researchers recommend a slightly different PowerPoint format. Rather than simply read the text on the PowerPoint slide, read from a script that complements visuals like diagrams and pictures that present the same information in a very different format. “[I]t is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented.”<\/p>\n

So, this inability to concentrate for long periods of time on PowerPoint presentations? It’s not<\/i> me! That’s a relief! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can’t tell you how many presentations I’ve been to over the years–at work and elsewhere–that have been delivered via PowerPoint. Usually, when EB Games rolled out a new program, managers would come and watch\/listen to a PowerPoint presentation for an hour or two. And while I’d be with it completely for the first fiveContinue reading “On the Perils of PowerPoint”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[1138,4124],"class_list":["post-999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-work","tag-powerpoint","tag-work","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}