Science+Lab+Death+By+Power+Point

=Back to Opening Script= (Based on Don Macmillan’s Youtube clip – Death by PowerPoint) http://youtube.com/watch?v=HLpjrHzgSRM&feature=related
 * Scene 4: Control Scientist – Teacher Signs and Symptoms **

(Reading from slide) One of the first things you might notice is that the faculty member will start
 * Chief: ** I understand we have some research on the signs and symptoms we observe when teachers have been affected by the pill.
 * Control Scientist 1: ** Well chief, we've done some research on the signs and symptoms that you might see in faculty who have injested the KAOS pill. It's very interesting and a bit worrisome.

Putting every word they are going to say on their PowerPoint slides. Although this eliminates the need to memorize the lecture, the content, or the actual point of the instruction, it ultimately makes the slides into a crowded wall of words, that is deadly dull, hard to follow, and ultimately makes no point. This is behaviour that will guarantee a disengaged audience before the faculty member reaches the bottom of the... Uh…..... first slide.


 * Chief: ** Oh dear. I think I have seen a bit of that already at our Georgian Super Secret Spy School.

Carlesnes when it comes to runig spel cheek before preseting infomaton – ether in Powerpoint or ni handoots. Big mistak!! This can leed to a distructed and confuzd audiense tht is desifering speling erers insted of lering. Faculty seem to become unclear about the main message of their lesson and have long lists of bullet points. The audience in turn tries madly to write them all down with no idea of what is really important. Too many bullet points can result in learner distraction, confusion, headaches, nausea, and eventually loss of bladder control (which you will know has happened when they get up and leave the room in the middle of the talk) Basically, the font chosen says something about engagement (or lack there of) in the delivery of the lesson. We’ve only begun our analysis of what the various fonts mean but so far we have good evidence to show that: When you choose, Arial,, which happens to be my favorite, you are probably organized and structured. If you choose Comic Sans, you are exploring your artistic side. If you choose Impact, you are determined and focused. And if you choose Times new Roman, you have been deeply affected by the KAOS drug and are always using the default – a sign that you have lost your ability to be creative, have not paid attention to instruction on message readability, and. At this stage there is a shift to obsessive use some particular presentation tool. For example, faculty may try to pack extreme amounts of data into their presentations. They might try to add in more and more data thinking it's better, even though it's not since it is harder to read, and harder to focus in on anything in particular. The don’t realize that as they add more information and talk more, the learning effectiveness actually plummets. Take this example of a slide on Learning Styles. We begin by seeing there are many different dimensions to learning styles. Then we consider… In extreme cases, they might try to add some shading and 3-D effects, then some second order and third order effects, and then - maybe some labels thinking that will help a lot. Research shows it doesn’t. And there are regions here by the way. There’s the simple but effective region. There’s the active but confusing. There’s the effective but boring There’s the active but ineffective the dull but static region, the busy but useless, the ADD only, the useful but amusing the dull triangle, the hyper triangle the sleepy square the dizzying pentagon, And the everything else, which can be labeled pointless motion.
 * Control Scientist 2 ** (Spelling)**:** Another symptom that may appear is
 * Chief: ** But doesn’t the red underline indicate an error.
 * Control Scientist 2: ** Yes chief. It seems that those who have been affected do not see those red lines. We will continue to study whether this is due to colorblindness, lack of attention to detail, or a spell check phobia.
 * Chief: ** Good idea.
 * Control Scientist 1 ** (Bulleted lists)**:** The next symptom we have uncovered is excessive bullet pointing.
 * Chief: ** Well, luckily we haven’t seen too much of that yet.
 * Control Scientist 2: ** (Font analysis) Another tool we can use to detect symptoms of the pill is font analysis.
 * Control Scientist 1 ** (Excessive data)**:** Now we will move into the signs and symptoms at the later stages – perhaps after several injections. By the way, our research has also shown that the more PowerPoint slides you have in your presentation, the less useful your talk actually is. Unfortunately, we’re heading down this slope right now.
 * Chief: ** Very interesting. It makes me wonder why this is the type of thing we often see in sales presentations.
 * Control Scientist 1: ** Good point chief.
 * Control Scientist 2: ** Finally chief, we have the obsessive use of animations. Animation in PowerPoint is very interesting and not that hard to do. If you're a visual learner that can be good and will improve the effectiveness of the presentation. But if you're easily distracted, then animations will soon make it so you have no idea what the presenter is talking about. You’ll just be saying, “Wow! that is cool! wow!”
 * Chief: ** “Wow! that is cool! wow!”
 * Control Scientist 2: ** See what I mean.
 * Chief: ** You got my attention though.
 * Control Scientist 2: ** Yes, but do you remember anything that I said.
 * Chief: ** Good point.
 * Control Scientist 2: ** And that one slide took an hour and a half to make.
 * Chief: ** OK. We have to get this information to Max and 99 right away. They’ll be able to monitor infiltration among our Control Agents. But, more importantly we have to find ways to help our Agents combat the affects of the KAOS pill. We have to come up with communication devices that will help them connect to the differences in our students. I need you both to get on that immediately.
 * Control Scientists: ** Will do Chief.