Share Paper: Toward Appreciative Engagements with Slideware

  1. Catherine Adams, University of Alberta, Canada
Wednesday, June 27 11:15-11:45 AM Pavilion Ballroom C

Abstract: PowerPoint presentations make both an effective (informational) and affective (aesthetic) claim upon the student. Aesthetically, teachers using PowerPoint slides may be unwittingly educating a questionable cognitive style, shifting their students’ gaze away from human gesture and facial expression towards a hypnotic corporate gloss, thereby altering classroom atmosphere and tone, even as they efficiently deliver the content of their talk. In an aesthetically thick sense, PowerPoint instantiates, indeed, significantly fortifies, the transmission model of learning, a model also perpetuated through traditional school architectures, standard classroom geometries and choice of educational artifacts. Nonetheless, coming to a finer appreciation of PowerPoint's aesthetic potentials ...