I’m a Luddite in terms of educational technology. Never learned how to use PowerPoint because the PowerPoint-driven talks and lectures I’ve sat through have almost invariably been boring. And the slides have always struck me as another step in the direction of student passivity; students just sit there and copy down what it says on the slide, so why bother to pay attention to the lecture, get involved in the discussion, or think about the subject matter? I think Edward Tufte nailed this several years ago.
So I’m old-fashioned. But sometimes it pays to be old-fashioned, because if you wait long enough, chances are you’ll come back into fashion. Here’s hoping.
Case in point: At least at one school (SMU), the dean is trying to talk faculty members out of using PowerPoint and to banish computers from the classroom.