Any of you guys ever see a presentation that isn't on power point since you have been at UMR? Any of you grads that are out in the business world see presentations that aren't power point? The reason I ask, is because a speech teacher here at UMR says that any idiot can do a power point, and that it isn't a decent presentation, which I am pretty sure is a load of crap. The only time that I see a presentation that isn't power point is when someone prints out a power point, and uses it on a projector. What do you guys think, are power points the way presentations are done, or should someone spend a shitload of money to have a decent looking, hardcopy, presentation, that will only be used once?

lol, do you have Kaiser?

Yep.

my senior year, i did my final speech presentation in flash. it took a while to do the whole thing up in flash, but it was really cool when it was finished.
but here i havent seen anything but powerpoint. what does the professor want you to use?

I saw one in LaTeX about LaTeX.

It's not LaTeX, it's !

GIS for "latex" was fun.

The problem with Power Point presentations doesn't have a lot to do with Power Point itself. I think it's mostly the fact that 90% of the people just read the slides. The slides should supplement the presentation, not be the focus of it.

Yeah. When I was in Kaiser's class last semester, some people still did Powerpoint after she said that. Some were very effective, some just read off the slides.

As a basically been said, any idiot can do a powerpoint presentation. Not every idiot can do a good powerpoint presentation, and therein lies the problem. I think a lot of it has to do with the presenter and how familiar they are with the material and with what their audience already knows, because I've seen some sub-standard powerpoints in awesome presentations, and amazing powerpoints in presentations that caused me never to want to work for a company.

Yes and Yes. I've seen people use latex, pdfs, keynote and a variety of other tools (all complete with transitions). Did it help? No.

Just because the technology is there doesn't mean that people can use it effectively. Everyone's been subject to the "slide jockeys" we have on campus. That type of person should either go away or learn how to integrate slide presentation effectively into their oral presentation.

Slides aren't meant to be the show - the person is. If a person looks back at their slides for anything but to make sure it's showing, a little piece of me dies on the inside. If they do it consistantly, I have to fight the urge to leave (if I wanted them to read their slides I would've just asked for them ahead of time and not shown up).

--sea

I have a teacher now that constantly does presentations in his own notes on a projector. It isn't too bad because he expounds on them a lot. I also have had one that did all of his presentations in Word. That was pretty boring. And of course there is Bieniek who did his in who-knows-what. Other than those instances, I think just about every teacher has done theirs in PowerPoint.

I think Bieniek does his stuff in the WordPerfect analog of PowerPoint.

Bieniek was the only professor that I had that I thought used computer presentation aids properly.

I think it's ok to look back at your slides as long as you're not reading them verbatim from the slides. When I have to do PowerPoint presentations for classes, I put on the slides the keywords that will trigger in my brain everything I need to say about that keyword. So on the slide, I maybe have "wind generator." But I'll look back, see that, turn back to the audience, and say "The company erected a massive three-blade wind generator, which supplies the building with 20% of its annual electricity needs. The immediate cost of this generator is excessive, but with time the buildings saves enormously on energy costs."
I'm not the most confident speaker, so I get nervous and stuff I want to say I sometimes forget to, so having these "triggers" to remind me what to say helps and I don't think detracts from the presentation if I only look back briefly to remind myself of the next subject.

I can see this... I'm usually much less annoyed when it's an undergrad presenting and they look back (unless they do read verbatim - this isn't high school)... but professors.. never; Besides, if you position the laptop correctly, you should never have to look back :-D

--sea