Tuesday, March 01, 2005

PowerPoint v blogging

I'm interested in the ways in which the use of PowerPoint orients and modifies the rhetoric of scientific oral communication. There was an excellent programme about this on BBC Radio 4 recently in which they did a spoof of Churchill's "We will fight them on the beaches" speech. "We will fight them on [hits the keyboard and bullet point n° one whooshes in] beaches. We will also be fighting them on the [hits keyboard again, second bullet point appears] landing grounds." etc. (If anyone has a recording of the programme please let me know, it's disappeared from the BBC's online archive). Anyway, here is a business blogger's take on blogging v. PowerPoint Brand Autopsy: "I’ve been blogging for just over a year now and besides keeping my marketing mind sharp, blogging has helped me sharpen my writing skills. (Or so I think.) The years of writing in succinct bullet-points for PowerPoint decks adversely impacted my writing. Blogging, albeit informal in nature, has helped me to improve my writing skills. And as a result of writing more, I’m finding myself using PowerPoint less and less in business situations."

1 comment:

Nathan Lowell said...

Powerpoint is one of my hobbyhorses. I deal with faculty all the time who believe that powerpoint is Good Communication.

They never seem to understand that powerpoint is an outliner.

Confinement

Being confined indoors most of the day, just the four of us, is reminding me of the days when my children were wee and most of our weekends ...