Is PowerPoint useful??

I had two teachers in high school use PowerPoint. They both used it effectively. One taught economics. The other taught leadership and ethics. They used the slides as a way to focus our attention on the point of the lesson. They did not read from the slides, or have extraneous features that distracted from their message. Also, they did not use PowerPoint presentations everyday. I think that this is important. Anything can get old. PowerPoint is not appropriate for every lecture either. They did a good job of choosing when the lecture would be improved by using slides to focus the attention of the class. Additionally, they taught us how to make PowerPoint presentations. We were required to give a presentation to the class, using the pointers that they had given us.

Their pointers have helped me to learn to streamline what I want to put on the slides and to use the slides as a springboard for discussion. Once you put a slide that has a lot of words, students start copying and stop listening. I think it is more beneficial to put up a few words and pictures that will help the students understand the point. Giving a visual can also help start discussion without the students even having to read anything. I have used PowerPoint presentations to share images with students without using any text. I found this successful in focusing the students' attention and promoting discussion.