I confess...I've been using PowerPoint lately
And I feel guilty about it. Neddie Jingo has a short, tasteful tirade against it.
It can be used well. I was brought up on slide based talks, where each little image was an exercise in labor, often requiring old-fashioned photography and darkroom work. Each was an investment, and you put them on the screen with commitment—it took you a week to get that cell labeled just right, and then you had to shoot a dozen exposures at different focal planes, and you sent them off to be developed and crossed your fingers for three days hoping they'd come out well, and by dog once they were up there in lights at the meeting you were going to take some care explaining exactly what they meant.
Nowadays you slap it up there in a minute and because it's so easy you surround it with a couple those stupid bullet-point slides that reduce the meaning to a few easily remembered phrases, and the talk becomes a recitation of short, easily digested exclamations. I remember when a great hour-long talk would have 10 or 15 data slides; now, it's 60, 70, 80 PowerPoint blips that you motor through as fast as you can read them off. It might be an interesting exercise to take a student presentation and tell them they have to cut out half or two thirds of the slides, and still give a talk that was the same length. It would be a far, far better talk, I'm sure…but it would be hard on them.
People from the corporate world are the worst offenders. Physicians tend to iimtate them and are almost as bad. But biolists tend to use PPT quite well. Guy who wrote a book about it is in our Department and he won't let us make a bad presentation.
Last week I went to my daughter's school where they (4th grade) gave group presentations on several Native American tribes. I was dreading it because I knew they were on Power Point. I was pleasantly surprised - that teacher really knew how to get the kids to use PPT correctly. It's not the tool - it's how it's used.