by Christine
Little
Director of Global Training
Habitat for Humanity
Where I work (Latin America), PowerPoint
is de rigueur, and a signal that the “presenter” knows
what he/she is talking about. In a current process we are undergoing
with strategic planning, I am also seeing PowerPoint presentations
that are purposefully designed to impress, rather than to inform.
When I teach Dialogue Education,
I focus a lot on the idea of putting the content into the hands
of the learners. In fact, we use clay to demonstrate the difference
between content being presented as a static untouchable truth,
versus content presented as something I need to take apart,
put together, push, pull and mold in order to really learn it
and decide to let it change me in some way.
When we get to the inevitable
PowerPoint question, I take one of my flip charts with a model
on it, and I rip it in half. Then we talk about whether that
is something that can be done with a PowerPoint, how does our
perception of the content change when it is presented in a beautiful
PowerPoint presentation. How much more “true” is it
there, as compared to on a piece of paper.
It is usually a great dialogue
and many people identify their own tendencies to overvalue content
that is based on its “presentability” rather than
its relevance and usefulness.
