OK, let me give my dialectical predilections full sway . . . I loved
that complaint ppt, too; it's right up there with John Cleese
complaining about his parrot.

But.

That's my main problem with ppt: it affords that kind of one-ended,
no-response, sockittome rhetoric. You wouldn't choose to use ppt to
_negotiate_ with the Doubletree. Not, of course, that you _couldn't_:
but what it most comfortably affords (thanks for the reminder of the
relevance of that terminology, Doug) is diatribe, one-ended delivery.
 Sure, Rob's right (it was Rob who said it?) there are times when you
want to deliver information.

I think teaching's rarely one of them, though. The objections to ppt
that I've heard, of course, go way beyond teaching (as do Tufte's),
but I think that's what all of us here are talking about. If I want an
explanation of the new server configuration at UNB, or the internal
organization of the ministry of environment, I imagine ppt would be a
pretty powerful tool: but if I'm trying to engender active
construction of a new and subtle idea, well . . .

-- Russ

St. Thomas University
http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/

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