Powerpoint Debate #1

In Edward Tufte's article titled "PowerPoint is Evil" he describes why and how PowerPoint is evil. In his first example about PowerPoint he compares it to a drug that promised to make people beautiful but in fact had serious side effects, inducing stupidity, making people bores, wasting time, etc. He then goes on to complain that PowerPoint is everywhere and has turned all speakers/lecturers into people that "elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch". Tufte also says that PowerPoint replaces writing reports in school and instead teaches them how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. His final stab at PowerPoint is how it makes charts. To quote him "Applying the PowerPoint templates to this nice, straightforward table yields an analytical disaster".

However Tom Rocklin counters this idea with his article titled "PowerPoint is not evil". He first talks about his own reaction when he read the article saying he was shocked at this revelation and then became angry that he was the kind of teacher that was put in the category that "elevates format over content". Rocklin then goes on to list why PowerPoint is not evil and that it is simply an easy and useful commodity to teaching. He compares it to having a printer in that rather than writing a quiz on a marker board you simply print off the quiz with the printer. He then lists an example of a perfectly normal good teacher who uses PowerPoint and explains why. Simply put, it is an easy, useful piece of technology used to help share information. Rocklin then explains that this teacher does not "elevate format over content" and in fact PowerPoint helps him to teach better.