Just look at all the boxes you can fill with stuff!
Maybe it's just me, but as I read Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," I couldn't help but feel that it was directed at me, especially between the ages of eleven and fifteen.  This feeling of guilt grew even more as I watched Davits' pecha-kucha on pecha-kuchas, and remember growing up with PowerPoint.  I clearly recall being astounded at all of the tricks it could do, only to become disillusioned with each of them, one by one.  Tufte's disapproval of the "abuse" PowerPoint performs on content is legitimate, and I stand guilty as charged.

I have to admit that I did love PowerPoint at first.  When they added the letter-by-letter animations,  I was still in middle school, and I couldn't wait to use them. I thought they looked really cool until I watched my slideshow just once and couldn't even sit through it myself.  Animations, once the most exciting thing on the screen, were just distractions that lost the audience's favor (and quickly).
  
Is it 1? Or just under 1?  Maybe 0.98 New Nations?
An even harder lesson to learn was appropriate information density, or managing clutter, a lesson PowerPoint certainly does not seem to be aware of (see image at top right).  Tufte's advice on data-to-ink ratios would have been invaluable in this area, as would the six lines per slide, six words per line guideline.  However, I'm not sure that Tufte is age-appropriate for most students that are being introduced to PowerPoint.  For such a group, I feel that the now-global pecha-kucha presentations would be more suitable to show them the ropes, as far as effective information presentation is concerned.


The real trouble with class PowerPoint presentations came later, as we got to high school.  Our projects became more and more complex, so more people would stand there and read long blocks of text directly off of the screen.  Tufte's book does not address this issue quite as well as the rigid format of pecha-kucha presentations does.  I can remember many past projects with a time or slide limit (nobody had considered both), which often drove students crazy, either trying to cram their slides with information or rehearsing their slides over and over to nail a time limit.  The turmoils of middle and high school presentations may be averted with pecha-kuchas, but Tufte's core idea of being true to your content must come into play at some point in the education process.
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In class, we discussed Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics," which is really the seminal work in well, understanding comics.

Trap. The combination of the genres of trance and rap usually through sound mixing and editing, has become a staple of parties and festival shows. They share similar use of synth, heavy base and spoken words to create music.

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In Vitaly Friedman's article "10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of," the first item listed is  problematic hidden login links on websites.

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Of the recent readings for this course, I feel most compelled to comment on the writings of Jakob Nielsen. I had heard of him before, touted as the leading expert of usability.

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Web site usability

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... and how clashing implications continue to shape our reactions to these colors.

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In our recent discussions of usability of websites, I can’t help but want to critique the website of Pine Lake Pastures, where I take horse riding lessons.

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This is an advertisement from a non-profit organization in reference to second hand smoke.

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When talking about the ethics and rhetoric of data displays in class, I brought up the example of geographic information system (GIS) and their technique of interpolation.

"The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint" makes the assertion that:

The core ideas of teaching- explanation, reasoning, finding

things out, questioning, content, evidence, credible authority not patronizing

authoritarianism-are contrary to the cognitive style of PowerPoint.

When I first pulled out Tufte's packet on Power Point, it looked like one of the most boring texts on the planet. 30 pages on the style of Power Point? But as I read, I started to see his point and even found myself laughing at certain parts (talking about the “stupefied audience”).

Maybe it's just me, but as I read Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," I couldn't help but feel that it was directed at me, especially between the ages of eleven and fifteen.

VISUAL ARGUMENTS BLOG  (Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments.)

Mary E.

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After reading the article “The rhetoric of black, white and red: Responsibility and aesthetics to persuade with color” by Jose Luis Caivano and Mabel A. Lopez the section on ritual and religious persuasion and intimidation stood out the most.

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Edward Tufte’s The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint lobbies some legitimate criticisms. The medium of visual presentations has always been one that I have found difficult to approach, execute, or understand.

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