would you rather read a PPT slide set as a PDF?

newbiesforever · 08-05-2018, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frankbell

I used to be trainer and instructional designer, and this threads hits one of my tenderest pet peeves.

[RANT]

I loathe handouts that consist of pictures of Powerpointless slides.

A slide is one medium; a handout is a different medium. They have different properties and should be formatted appropriately to the medium. Someone who is too lazy to fit the message to the medium, even if it means no more than piping the text of the slides into outline form, is--oh, never mind.

Powerpoint has ruined presentations. Presenters try to squeeze their presentations into Powerpoint, rather than shape Powerpoint to fit their presentations. I've personally known only one person who could do the latter, and he made *.ppt files into things of persuasive, instructive beauty.

[/RANT]

Oh, my answer to OP's question is *.pdf. PDF readers are a dime a dozen (or, on Linux a nothing a dozen).

I sympathize. I certainly never asked my professors to start using Powerpoint seemingly compulsively. Which, in my experience, began 10-15 years ago late in my first college career.

newbiesforever · 08-22-2018, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turbocapitalist

The instructor should have just made them into PDFs in the first place. However, that is probably difficult or impossible using the legacy software he is probably using.

She certainly could have been using legacy software, but I imagine it was more that she thinks slides are good, she has been trained to use a slide maker (likely PowerPoint), and she wasn't interested in or inquisitive about considering alternative possibilities such as PDF.

I agree that slide sets are "PowerPointless." I consider them and their software (either PP or Impress) a kludge. Every PDF reader I know of is quicker and easier to use.

jsbjsb001 · 08-22-2018, 11:38 AM

Not particularly.