PowerPoint Evangelism and Written Evaluations

So it turns out to finish this bloody degree I have to take a few boring required courses. One of them is about ethics, another about presentations, and there is some more but I forget what the heck boring subjects they cover.

In any case, the presentations class is total bull, but it can be fun sometimes. We aren't allowed to skip it, cause we have to act as audiences for the other students. Bogus.

We had to select a first presentation topic from a list. I chose "Web Based Education". We had to make up powerpoint presentations and blabber on for 15 minutes in front of the class. The presentations were to be reviewed by the TA for feedback and approval.

My inital revision of my presentation didn't pass as I included "PowerPoint is garbage" in my powerpoint presentation. So I changed it to "PowerPoint is bad". PowerPoint isn't actually that bad. PowerPoint is like a handgun. The tools in themselves aren't stupid, but outcome resulting from their use can be incredibly dumb.

On the day I was supposed to do my presentation, the TA's computer was having major issues. I ended up running home to get my own computer, which I was sure that worked. It all looked sketchy, running around campus with a laptop under one arm. When I finally got back to the classroom, I soon discovered that in the meantime the other computer decided to start working properly, making my mad dash not worthwhile at all.

After completing an especially sweaty presentation, I got some great anonymous evaluations back. The form had many sections, including "Strengths" and "Weaknesses". "Strengths" contained the usual super duper stuff. "Weaknesses" was more entertaining, for example:

"talk louder, show enthusiasm for your topic. Remember, this is a FORMAL presentation, so behave formally: 1) don't lean on desk 2) watch language ("ass", "bs" unacceptable)"

"some language not suitable for a business environment"

"sounded tired and broken up - get more sleep, caffeine"

"fidgeting"

"probably shouldn't swear (not that I care)"

"too casual in vocabulary"

"what is laptop olympics"

"Too much colloquial language and unfocused ideas"

"Be careful of generalizations (eg. 'Windows is a bad interface')"

"Gestures distracting. Too quiet. Unprofessional or unnecessarily poetic language ('plague, 'addiction', 'extinct dinosaur')"

"expresses his own opinion as if it was a fact"

Of course, people also did say some good things, and some didn't even fill out the weaknesses section.

The evaluations also had a bunch checkboxes and number ratings, which I haven't bothered to look at. They are so unimaginably useless. I don't know who came up with the idea that everything should be rated on a number line, but they should be shot. It doesn't save any time, as people tend to just insert more stupid boxes on the form to fill the page (there are about 12 ratings on this form, rating everthing from Sequence to Posture on a scale of 3) I prefer a one sentence explanation of why my presentation rocked/sucked.

In short, ratings are dumb, my word is fact.