Changing Paradigms: Pentagon Leader Bans the use of PowerPoint. What do you think?

Maybe having a course on how to actually brief and use PowerPoint appropriately would be in order.

I always followed the bullet point rule.

1. Russians have 200 tanks.(Then say the who, what, where and who they are going try to kill)
2. Russians have 10 SS-20 launchers(Then say the who, what, where and who they are going try to kill)

Couple of pictures. Closing slide. I saw no point in map, and them 12 slides of pictures, followed by 8 maps then some pretty graphics toss in some more filler.

I always enjoyed asking lots of questions of people who had pretty power point presentations. Because they normally could not brief or did not know the material.

Power point will still be used through out the rest of the military as a way of teaching and presenting as it is an easily attained and easy to use tool. The problem is not the presentation themselves but the presenters. Reading the bullet comments on the slide and not presenting comments is the problem. The issue that needs to be addressed is how to utilize the tool.

I think that Power Point has its place. It should provide some key points, but the person briefing the information should know everything on the slides forwards, backwards, and upside down....and a bit more! Should be able to field anything on the slide and qualify/quantify any answer that is only partly covered by the slides.

This is an overused crutch that tends to detract from actual conversation. It's ok if used correctly, but most of the time it is overused, and used ineffectively. Use it to show only that information that cannot be relayed through actual conversation and then keep it brief, to the point, with few words.

Sounds to me like Carter wants to sit down and have a conversation. I can see how PP would totally detract from that. Good for him.

Here is what usually happens, subject matter expert(s) get together and prepare a briefing for a Principle who is really just a politician. The Principle used the Power Point presentation to cover up his lack of expertise in the subject matter. By telling the Principle he can't use PowerPoint, you may manage to remove some of the distortion between the SME and recipient of the briefing, however the end effect is that the Principle is likely to understand the subject matter even less than before because he can no longer give the briefing.

How can anything function in the military without PowerPoint? Will they have some PFC holding up the slides instead of on a screen? Visual media aids can be quite helpful. To outright ban the usage of them in his meeting in Kuwait would severely diminish the effectiveness of the meetings in my opinion.
You shouldn't use the PP as the heart of your presentation but as a supplement to the presentation. It does you no good to have your entire presentation on the slide and you stand there and read it aloud while everyone else reads it.

Powerpoint is effect when used as a presentation tool. All to often it is used as a sole source of information for a decision--and cannot effectively describe the situation for an effect decision to be made.

Additionally, as a teaching aid... it is effective... as long as it is an aid and not "the material."

Sigh...don't ban PowerPoint; ban bad PowerPoint use. Good PowerPoint isn't tough to understand. Treat your briefing like a verbal scholarly paper. Your spoken words are the text and your slides are the figures. Simple.

Self-check: If your slides are an acceptable substitute for attending your briefing, you're doing it wrong.

Although I feel it is a frivolous move, I love the idea behind it. PowerPoint is overused by the military. When done properly, it presents key points of a presentation in easy-to-see fashion; however, most use it as a cue card to read from. No one learns anything that way. When you are the presenter of material, you should also be the SME on that material...not Vanna White turning pages and reciting lines.

Death to Death By PowerPoint!