The Big Fresh August 23, 2014 Pure Enjoyment PD

This is the season when literacy leaders are thinking about kick-off professional development sessions in the fall, and dusting off Powerpoint (and Keynote) presentations to be revised, or designing new sets of slides for their audiences. But what would happen to your presentation plans if you found out Powerpoint presentations were banned at your school?

It’s a reality many professionals in other fields are facing. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon (and the owner of the Washington Post) banned Powerpoint presentations over two years ago. Presenters instead must write six-page memos, which are read silently by everyone in the group before discussion begins.

While Amazon has moved to longer written narratives, most other workplaces that have ditched Powerpoint have moved back to the lowly whiteboard. Leaders have discovered Powerpoint slides can be a barrier to discussion and creativity in group settings.  It’s a growing trend across many different professions. Andrew Askew, a professor at a physics forum that banned Powerpoints, explained,  “The communication became a lot more two-way instead of just the speaker speaking at length for 15, 20 minutes. The audience really started to come alive, to look up from their laptop computers and actually start participating in the discussion, which is what we were really trying to foster.”

I’m not advocating a ban on Powerpoint presentations (we’ve even posted creative ideas recently for students developing them).  But the fact that so many leaders outside education have come to the same conclusion is great food for thought. If PowerPoint wasn’t an option for your back-to-school professional development sessions or presentations to families, what could you do with a whiteboard and a few questions to launch a discussion? What would happen if instead of firing up your computer and your LCD, you began with questions, or a read-aloud?  If the thought of open-ended discussions or the group response to reading is scary, how healthy is your school community? Jeff Bezos once said, “If I could organize my day just in terms of pure enjoyment, I would be with other people around a whiteboard.” What would a day of “pure enjoyment” PD look like for you?

This week we look at options for reader response. Plus more as always — enjoy!