For readers who enjoy the general topic of the trade-offs of communicating through PowerPoint, the PowerPoint version of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address[1] by Pete

For readers who enjoy the general topic of the trade-offs of communicating through PowerPoint, the PowerPoint version of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address[1] by Peter Norvig, LISP hacker who is now Google's director of research, is not to be missed. Another very interesting discussion of PowerPoint you can find for free online is "PowerPoint Does Rocket Science"[2] by data visualization guru Edward Tufte. [1] http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ [2] http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0... When I give a public presentation, I use a whiteboard and marker, or a blackboard and chalk. If I were in a really large auditorium, I would use an old-fashioned overhead project with blank transparency sheets that I would hand draw on as I speak. I want my talks to be interactive and audience-responsive, not canned. (I do tend to prepare bullet-point outlines with references on a page or two of paper before I give a talk, and email that out afterward, but I say more than I what I write down, and I respond to audience questions.) AFTER EDIT (TO ADD ANOTHER THOUGHT): Just last evening I was at a presentation for parents, at which I was presenting with permanent market on paper pads on an easel, and during discussion a parent mentioned that she has her son open-enrolled in the half-day kindergarten program in my local school district. The kindergarten classes largely use smart boards run by the teacher's computer for instruction, so the little pupils (sixteen in her son's classroom) see a lot of slide shows. The other day, the teacher was telling the class about apples, and rather than bring an actual apple into the classroom, the teacher showed a slide of a stock drawing of an apple. (Apples are available year-round in any grocery store in my town, and cost a lot less than a smart board.) Would you want your children to have this kind of education in early childhood? Wouldn't it produce a deeper understanding of apples and how they grow to touch and cut open an apple while in a school unit about apples? (My school district has a paraprofessional teacher aide in each classroom along with the certified teacher for kindergarten and early elementary classes, so there should be sufficient adults in the room to let pupils touch and see actual apples during class.) This seems like PowerPoint gone mad in primary education.