The Devil in the Details

'Powerpointlessness,' comes somewhat close to being an un-word in the fine German tradition of nominating the most infamous word of any given year. Certainly by degree it does not rank with such concepts as "ethnic cleansing" or "collateral damage" (both one word in German) in infamy, but somewhere in the lower echelons of mediocrity and imprecision, I feel like you will find this word lurking.

The idea behind the word is surely to suggest that much of the activity done under the guise of making a PowerPoint presentation is a gimmick and shoddy work. Two wrongs, however do not make a right. 'Powerpointlessness' is a catchy catch-all with all the precision and subtly of an atom bomb used to eradicate an anthill in your backyard.

Now, the concepts behind a word can lend it some utility, but if I have to stop and explain that by 'powerpointlessness' I mean that when students, teachers, and other professionals use a PowerPoint presentation they often err in multiple ways: cluttering their slides with stock images, sounds, animations and videos that amount to so much sound and fury, signifying nothing, then you have lost the battle. There are any number of things that can and do go wrong with a PowerPoint slide show as it relates to the classroom.

Beyond indicating there is a problem, 'Powerpointlessness' as a concept does not point to a solution, per se. It reminds me of the people who tell me the political system is 'broken.'

Yawn.

The political system is broken, as my friends say, but talk is cheap--to use another well-worn phrase. My question is: if Jamie McKenzie feels that the well-placed image or graphic that serves the point of the presentation is what differentiates the 'powerpointless' from the 'powerpointed,' how does he stack up in his article?

In the credits, McKenzie claims to have shot all the photographs--except the one's he attributed to other sources, I might add. In any case, few of his images seem "powerful." 'Functional' is the word I would use. They are certainly more striking than clip-art, but leave something to be desired. The man next to 'deliver dramatically' looks dramatic, were his face not something of a low-resolution blur. The diagram with antidotes for 'powerpoint poisoning' was legible, but managed to look cluttered, nonetheless. As a centerpiece with internal links to the rest of the article, it needed a bit more polish, I feel. I could not click on every bubble and get a response. The introductiory image with the frosted-abstracted poppy and surrounding flowers did not distract from--or relate to--the article's topic particularly, unless his goal was to have a solid image that did not call too much attention to itself. Shame on him for the little clip-art photographer under "Emphasize Ideas & Logic." Sure he was a sidelight, and that was probably the point the author wanted to make, but McKenzie does not transcend that creeping feeling that I am encountering gimmicks, no matter how thoughtful they are.

McKenzie seems to be confused about the idea of 'deconstruction.' Every work of art or cultural product, according to that theory, deconstructs itself and the knowledge it communicates. A better designed PowerPoint presentation will not seal up the aporia it contains even if it tightens the coherency of the presentation considerably, which is admirable.

McKenzie at his finest--or worst is section 'Eliminate Distractions' in which he inserts a graphic of the word 'flash' randomly to show how frills are distracting from content. He willfully participates in the activities that make or break PowerPoints, and some of them fall on both sides of the spectrum. It took guts to try to lead by example, but sometimes, he falls short as we all do.

I agree with McKenzie's call to show our students that we can do better than the nonsense that usually slips under the radar of our schools, colleges, graduate schools, and businesses. There is good in McKenzie's article, to be sure.

In my senior seminar class, I participated in a group that packed dense quotes and sentences with pop-in transitions and few images into a turgid PowerPoint I would rather forget. All the right ideas were there, but they were not sufficiently summarized, organized, and thought about.

By contrast, my PowerPoint on "The Fire Sermon" from T.S. Elliot's the Wasteland for my most recent English class, struck me as well-executed. Minimal, targeted quotes with carefully selected images to accompany them enhanced our group presentation of the section.

In addition to leading by example, teachers can clearly state objectives and criteria for PowerPoint grading, as McKenzie suggests. In addition, I feel that actually demonstrating features of PowerPoint will improve the quality of student and professional work using the program.

Accurately conveying meaning, as I have already argued, requires a mastery of the medium and its conventions, without which knowledge is powerless, and, yes, pointless.