For all the ranting people do about the evils of PowerPoint, it seems to me that people are missing the one bit of technology that is most responsible for incomprehensible presentations in science: the laser pointer.
Having watched a bunch of student talks last week, I was reminded once again of just how useless laser pointers really are. Unless you have a really bright pointer, with a fresh set of batteries, the dot of light is almost completely invisible. And I have reasonably good (corrected) vision– I doubt that anybody who’s red-green colorblind can pick them up at all.
The widespread use of laser pointers also encourages really static and dull presentations, allowing the speaker to stand fixed behind a podium thirty feet from the screen, and gesture vaguely and ineffectually at the screen. This is usually exceptionally futile, because at the distances between screen and computer in most classrooms, you need to be a ninja Zen master to hold a pointer steady enough to accurately point out any particular feature.
If you want to point at the screen, point at the screen. Get a big stick, and use it. Walk away from the podium, move your arms around, physically indicate what’s going on in your slides. It’s ok if you don’t have a presentation remote (though it’s easier if you do, and can click through slides while standing and pointing)– moving back and forth between the screen and your computer or projector won’t irreparably damage the presentation, and gives you something to do.
I love it when the presenter points at something and the laser dot is moving all over the screen. A stick actually works, and it lets you get into your presentation. I prefer almost anything to the white-men-can’t-jump efforts I saw once from a man without any pointer and an issue of interest too high on the screen. He bounced up three times and I think he cleared the floor by about three inches. He did manage to pull his shirttail out.
The holding steady thing is a problem. Someone should make a GYROSCOPIC laser pointer!!
Laser pointer stability is a piece of cake!
Brace the arm holding the pointer against the side of your body, using wrist and finger motion to control the pointer. The muscles providing motion to those joints are mostly dedicated to fine motor control and do a far better job at stabilizing the pointer than does the extended arm.
Advice only works for presenters who are not out of breath.
On the other hand, laser pointers are the most wonderful cat toys ever.
If you want to point at the screen, point at the screen. Get a big stick, and use it.
This isn’t even close to being universally applicable. I’ve given talks in several locations where either the screen was too big to make this effective, or the podium too far away (and the room too large to warrant moving away from the microphone) or there were multiple screens, etc.
It also requires me to turn my back on my audience more than I prefer.
While the “big stick” approach has its appeal, John Novak is right that there are many venues (including, all too often, conferences) where the approach fails due to screen size/height/distance from podium.
This is one case where I will tolerate animation in PowerPoint: add an arrow or other object(s) that says, “Look at this feature.” It also works in the case where you have multiple screens showing the same presentation, a problem not solvable any other way.
But please, *please* don’t point at your *laptop* screen and say ‘look here’
You can always move the mouse and use the screen-cursor arrow as a pointer.
There are also problems when the presenter acts more like a Jedi Knight:
http://www.breakingmurphyslaw.com/2008/04/16/jedi-knights-with-frickin-laser-pointers/
Brian said:
That was happening in a conference session I was chairing recently! I tried to be discrete about getting the speaker to point to the “big” screen.
On another note, one of my colleagues is red/green color blind. I tease him whenever I can by using a red laser pointer and pointing things out to him.
Get one of those 200 mW green lasers you can use to point out stars in the sky. No one will miss what you are pointing at, although some might go blind.
A Class 3B laser would seem just the thing for your talks, Chad!
If you want to point at the screen, point at the screen. Get a big stick, and use it.
This isn’t even close to being universally applicable. I’ve given talks in several locations where either the screen was too big to make this effective, or the podium too far away (and the room too large to warrant moving away from the microphone) or there were multiple screens, etc.
The thing is, in most of those cases, the laser pointer isn’t any use, either. If you’re talking on an IMAX screen, the pointer is even less visible than in a regular conference room, and if your slides are being projected on multiple screens, pointing at only one of them doesn’t do any good for the people who can only see one of the others.
If you’re talking in a situation where the big stick approach to pointing doesn’t work, you pretty much need to re-engineer your talk so that you don’t need to point at things on the slides. As Eric says, put a box around important equations, or add an arrow pointing out the features you want to highlight.
It really doesn’t have to be an IMAX to be out of reach of the typical pointer. Bear in mind, some of us give presentations where we’re seated at a conference table with our colleagues, for instance, and using a stick pointer would be unwieldy and hazardous to other peoples’ health.
My ideal solution is using the mouse pointer, but sometimes that’s not an option, either.
I’m really not seeing your objection to the laser pointer, any more than you’re seeing other peoples’ objection to PowerPoint. It’s a very useful tool. It’s especially useful when you’re not the presenter, but you have a question about something on a slide that you need to… wait for it… point to, from the audience. (Granted, this is atrocious etiquette for academic presentations, but quite common and useful for internal industry presentations.)
Pointers are bad, remotes are essential. And careful use of selected animations in PowerPoint decks are a thing of goodness. Better, though, is to put the work into selecting and editing good graphics.
Just recently I gave a talk that includes a step-by-step walkthrough of a complicated process on a computer. I didn’t waste time using PowerPoint animations, but I did come up with a clear set of graphics, using standard editing techniques like transparency to fade out portions of the diagram that weren’t relevant to the point under discussion. One graphic per slide, and then I can easily control the pace through my remote, or even step backwards through the “animation” if needed.
Lee: There are also problems when the presenter acts more like a Jedi Knight
I got a good chuckle out of your post, because I have seen several such presentations myself. Do not look into the laser beam with your remaining eye.
This problem has been around for decades. From the classic Guidelines for Giving a Truly Terrible Talk (although the site is in Norwegian, the article it quotes at length is in English):
Note that the link credits these guidelines to an article called “35-mm Slides: A Manual for Technical Presentations” by Dan Pratt and Lev Ropes. Slides were what people used before transparencies came along. They were out of favor by the time I reached grad school in the early 1990s; the only conference presentation I remember seeing that used slides was Carl Sagan’s talk at the AGU meeting in 1993 or thereabouts.
My, you guys like to mock the afflicted… you evil bunch of atheists!
As someone who is red-green colour blind, I just wanted to point out that we’re colour blind, not blind. And because we’re not blind… er… we can actually see light regardless of it’s colour! Hence, laser pointers hold no fear for me (brave soul, huh?). Of course, I wouldn’t be so confident of the colour but I’ve got my 2 year old son for guidance there!
Now, if any of you point to something and ask me, “What colour is this?” I’ll get really annoyed.
I have to agree that laser pointers are necessary – having given a talk in this room, I’m pretty sure the big stick method wouldn’t fly. For classrooms though, they’re probably superfluous.
The important thing though, is to use the pointer sparingly. I’ve seen talks where the entire audience is capitvated by following the random spot of light. In a good talk, you shouldn’t have to use a laser pointer more than four or five times, tops.
(And I did have one professor who could hold a laser pointer perfectly steady. I have no idea how she did it, but that spot didn’t move a millimeter.)
My favorite is running the laser pointer across the words on the slide as they are read verbatim. (This same presenter, in the same presentation, pointed at the screen when he wanted us to note something about a figure.)
The best trick I found to combat laser pointer jitter is to also hold a roll of quarters in the same hand. The increased mass will significantly increase the stability of the pointer.