How Low Can You Go?

When Chubby Checker sang "How low can you go?" in his 1962 hit record, "The Limbo Rock," he was talking about dancing, but it's just as appropriate to ask that question in relation to technology. Most teachers encounter technology in their courses by way of what is often called "technology integration." This can mean that technology is used in various mainstream subjects such as English or Social Studies or that it exists as a standalone subject with the goal being to teach students to apply technology to their other classes.

As software gets more powerful and computers get cheaper and more widespread, the temptation is to use the "highest" technology available. This often means using business-oriented software in the classroom. Microsoft Office is the prime, but not the only, example. The theory seems to be that the goal of technology instruction is first and foremost to "prepare our students for the workplace." I hear this from parents, technology teachers, and of course from software vendors. Since many businesses use Office, the theory goes, we need to teach today's students to use Office, otherwise they won't get good jobs. The proof of the fallacy in this argument is that none of today's office workers used MS Word when they were in sixth grade. It didn't exist back then, at least not in it's current incarnation. Similarly, there is no justification for teaching students to use business presentation software such as PowerPoint so they can use it later in their careers. There may be some good educational applications of PowerPoint, but getting them ready to work isn't one of them.

So what is the reason to teach technology in a secondary school, and what is the best software with which to do it? Those are two of the key questions of technology education. I believe that the answer to the first one is that we should teach technology so that students can become more effective at learning. Technology should enable their ability to think, analyze, express, organize, research, understand, and create. Any time spent learning to use the technology is actually at the expense of these skills. There are only forty-five minutes in a class period, after all. If the technology takes too much time, it's in the way.

This runs counter to what many technology teachers think and practice, however. The computer geek in us wants to be able to own and operate the Ferrari of technology--the fastest, most powerful tools available. Most often, however, a Ford Fiesta more than does the trick. Unfortunately, that may not seem like good job security to the technology teachers among us, so we build our curricula around learning advanced programs even though they have little practical benefit in the classroom. Simple software is less intimidating, has a shallower learning curve, and is easier to master.

The second question--What is the best software with which to teach technology?--is a little easier to answer. Although there is no specific list that will satisfy everyone, I believe the guideline should be "err on the side of simplicity." Lets go back to word processing for an example. Students should use a word processor when it facilitates their writing. Sometimes the best means of expressing an idea is a paper and pencil; if so, put the laptop away. Too often I've seen students working at the computer trying to complete a writing assignment. They type the title page; choose the font, then the color. They use the advanced features of Word to twist the title so it's more "attractive." They change the color of the title to a different shade. Twist the text in another direction. Elapsed time--ten minutes, maybe fifteen if they get into more of the "advanced" features. As teachers we should be asking ourselves and our students what this actually has to do with the writing assignment. The answer, of course, is probably, "very little." Yet it's easy to fool ourselves into believing that their technology here is really worthwhile.

MS Word is so powerful and has so many features that students can be overwhelmed with the possibilities, or they just practice "work avoidance" by trying out one option after another. Google Docs (or any other simple word processor that you may prefer) does all of the necessary functions that you need from a word processor. Plus, there are fewer choices, the learning curve is not as steep, and there are fewer opportunities for distractions. Will this guarantee better writing? No, of course not. But it will facilitate better writing. It's up to the teacher to take it from there.

Here's another example. PowerPoint is the most widely used presentation software in the world, yet it has many more features than necessary and generally teaches bad presentation habits to boot. Err on the side of simplicity and choose something better. Consider large sheets of paper and some markers (I'm not kidding.) Or just have the students write on the board. That may be too low tech for some of us to stoop, but give it a try before you laugh at the idea. If the presentation requires an electronic medium, try a simple word processing document with a large font. Microsoft has an excellent program called Photo Story 3 that you can download for free at the Microsoft website here. It's not identical in function to PowerPoint, but it is much more intuitive to use, and students can be more creative because they aren't locked into the five-by-seven-inch-bulleted-slide format that PowerPoint users create ad nauseam.

There are many more examples I might give, but the point is this: Once you've decided that technology will assist your students in a particular lesson, try to pick the simplest, easiest-to-use application. Rarely will you find that it is too underpowered for your needs. If it is, you can always advance to the next higher level. Remember that the point of technology integration isn't to teach technology as an end in itself; it's to teach students to use technology as a means to an end. And when you're looking to use technology, remember the words of Chubby Checker in "Limbo Rock." Ask yourself "How low can you go?"

Next: My Favorite Things

I Can't Think of a LowerPoint

So, what better place to start a discussion of technology and education than with the program that is my personal bête noire. And it should be every teacher's bête noire. It's not that there are no good uses in the classroom for PowerPoint; it's just that there are so many poor ones. Edward Tufte has written extensively on the misuse of PowerPoint. His essay, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, is well-worth the $7 purchase price. Google "bad powerpoint", and you'll soon realize this is fertile terrain that is being frequently plowed.

My personal favorite example is Peter Norvig's, The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation. It's a Civil War reenactment of the presentation Abraham Lincoln might have given in 1863 had he been so unlucky as to have had today's technology available. There are many others. Unfortunately, too many of them aren't parodies of famous speeches; they are someone's attempt at presenting information in a logical, clear manner and failing.

There are are number of reasons that I believe PowerPoint is the wrong tool for just about all uses in the classroom. And actually, they apply to just about every other setting as well. The single, most important one--the one I'll focus on here--is software bloat. PowerPoint just has too many features that are unnecessary in most situations.

A software sales brochure might describe PowerPoint as a fully-featured tool designed for making effective presentations when, in fact, it's a program that focuses on appearance at the expense of content. Just about every presentation you would need to give could be done effectively with one template, one font, and one transition. Why is that a problem in the classroom? Because when designing a presentation, students and teachers tend to get caught up in hundreds of decisions over which transition, sound effect, shade of green, et al. that they want to use. They try out every transition (wasting a lot of time in the process) and then include ten different ones (rather than choosing one and sticking with it.) All of this is at the expense of the content.

I continually remind students that the more flash their presentation has, the less likely their audience is to remember the content. I tell them, "Do you want your audience to remember the neat way one slide twirled into the next, complete with computer generated sound effects, or the subject of your presentation?" As student presenters it's unlikely that the audience will remember both. And as our MTV culture proves again and again, flash trumps content every time.

I've seen students waste an entire period just deciding which background color and template to use for a presentation. Ask them at the end of class what they did, and they'll say, "I was working on my presentation." In reality they were practicing work-avoidance. Looking busy so as to avoid the hard work of developing the content of their presentation.

Of course my students then ask, "Why are all those features there if we shouldn't use them?" Good question. Here's my answer. Microsoft (and other developers of the latest bloat-ware) aren't interested in effective presentations per se. They are interested in selling software. Here's what I think happens. Microsoft develops a good presentation program, PowerPoint 1.0, with basic tools for making content look attractive. They sell a bunch of copies. About a year later Bill Gates tells his developers, "Sales are flat; we need a new version of PowerPoint." So the developers dream up some neat, new features--ten new templates, eight extra transitions, more sound effects. Voilà. PowerPoint 2.0.

A year later and sales are flat again and Bill Gates meets with his developers. You get the idea. By the time we're up to version 5.0 we've got a Swiss Army knife on steroids. (Does anyone actually use that toothpick, anyway?) What the developers neglected to realize was that most of what they added wasn't needed in the first place. Except for selling software, that is.

Take a clue from the print media. The New York Times publishes a newspaper with the same color paper, same font, and same layout every day. They know that too much variability is distracting. If they've got good news stories, they'll sell papers. The same goes for visual media. Watch a commercial or movie and notice the transitions. Most are simple cuts. Occasionally there will be a dissolve or fade. The fact that the audience isn't conscious of these means that they are following the story. The transitions support the story, they don't distract from it.

But, you might say, for better or worse, we are stuck with PowerPoint on all of the computers in the lab. What to do? Here are some guidelines that I give to students and teachers when they've got a presentation assignment.

To paraphrase Hippocrates, "First, do no PowerPoint." Challenge your students to make a presentation without any technology at all. Some of the most memorable ones I've attended consisted of a speaker and a white board. If the students know their material, they're well on their way toward making an effective presentation. If they don't know their material, no one will be fooled no matter what they do. Of course, this may make the teacher's job more difficult. It takes more effort to really evaluate the content of a presentation than it does to count numbers of slides and length of sound clips.

Consider using some other, more appropriate tech tool. You can do great presentations with a Word document set in a large point size. Try Microsoft's free PhotoStory 2. It's a great tool for combining text, audio, and graphics. Have students publish their content to a blog, and let other students comment on the blog. My point is not to provide an exhaustive list here, but to challenge students and teachers to ask themselves, "What would be a more effective method of getting my message across to my audience?"

If you must use PowerPoint (and there are some good uses that I'll discuss in a subsequent post), keep it simple. I limit my students to one template, one font, one transition (with extra consideration for "None"), and I don't even let them start PowerPoint until they've done their research and written some content. Then I make them sketch out what's to be put on each slide. Only then can they actually start PowerPoint. I make it clear that they can add other effects to their presentations if they'd like, but these additions will in no way have a positive effect on the final evaluation. At best they will be neutral, and if they are distracting, they will be judged to reduce the effectiveness of the presentation.

There is much more, pro and con, that I could write about using PowerPoint in the classroom. I'll take up some of it in a later post. For now though, it's worth reminding ourselves that we've all attended way too many poor presentations by students and colleagues most of which were done in PowerPoint. Ask yourself if they would have been better or even worse had they been done without PowerPoint?

Next: How the iPod changed my life.