Research at the University of NSW, Sydney, Australia, claims the human brain processes & retains more information if it is digested in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time. more of the passages would be understood & retained if heard or read separately. "The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster," Professor Sweller said. "It should be ditched."

"It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind & decreases your ability to understand what is being presented."

This new insight clearly puts the recent report about using Powerpoint in Parliament speeches in a new perspective.

Interesting.

Some of the best powerpoint presentations I've seen so far have been extremely simple. They tended to focus on images, words and data so iconic, so clear, so easily understood in seconds that they a) almost required no input from the presenter and b) could have been framed and use as artwork. Slides with ten bullet-points and sub bullet points just put me to sleep. Bleh bleh bleh... bleh... blehhhhhhhhhh...

Related reading: The PDF, smh.com

Labels: communication, language, powerpoint