Title: The over use of powerpointArticle: I am a teacher in a primary school in England. To be absolutely honest, I am no longer young and to add to that I have returned to teaching after a break of over 20 years. Imagine then, how much things have changed...and not all for the better might I add! When I trained in the 1970's there were no such things as computers. We used chalk and rolling blackboards and everyone handmade all their worksheets. We were able to share with our colleagues but there was nothing like the Internet with it's millions of resources.

So, one of the biggest advances has been in the use of computer technology. Before I go any further I would like to make the point that I embrace all the new technology we have at our fingertips. I started off with a basic word processing course and since then I have gone from strength to strength. I love my computer, and since I was give a laptop and a brand new smart board in my classroom I have become something of a computer buff....at my age! I know as well as the next person that computers are the future and that we need to ready our children for what their future will be. I am an avid user of my smart board and it's resident resources which are too numerous to mention! I am learning new things all the time.

Unfortunately, the one thing that I cannot stand is the over use of power point as a training tool. I cannot believe how many training sessions rely totally on the power point to get across the message. My heart sinks when I see how many slides are lined up and I know that the trainer is going to insul!t my intelligence by reading every single one of them. I find myself working out the fact that it took him or her 10 minutes to laboriously explain the first slide, and that there are another 26 tortuous slides to go to go!

As teachers we would be hung, drawn and quartered if we dared to make children sit in one position and just listen for a fraction of the time it is expected of us. Not only that, but these trainers are usually pontificating about something to do with the way we are educating the children in our care. What about the kinesthetic learners? Power point is mind numbingly dull and shows a distinct lack of imagination. Any body with a modicum of skill can produce one...let's face it, the machine near enough does it for you!

The last straw was a fire safety training day earlier this month. The fireman in charge kept us sat on hard chairs for 3 and a half hours while he read slide after slide after boring slide. He did manage a 15 minute break for a cup of tea....big deal! After nearly 2 hours he told us that now would be a good break time as we were half way through. My heart sank- literally...I did not know how I was going to stand the rest of the talk. Nothing for the kinesthetic learners at all and it would have been really easy, given the subject! We could at least have let off a couple of fire extinguishers in the playground! Suffice to say that his evaluation form made interesting reading. It was death by power point and actually discourages me from entering into many training agreements.

What ever happened to good old fashioned memory? What happened to the trainer actually facing the people he is training? The final insult comes when the trainer, at the end of the session, presents you with paper copies of the slides he has just bored you to death with. I have never once looked at thise papers and I regard them, and the powerpoint, as a complete waste of time. It should be either outlawed altogether or at least limited to a small number of slides. If the people who train us put in half as much effort as we do with our lesson plans, things would be a whole lot better!

Learn more about this author, Carol Jackson.
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