You know what grinds my gears?
PowerPoint presentations.
I know that we can all attest that there is that certain professor at Shippensburg University that teaches his or her class by PowerPoint.
It does not make class harder or easier; it just causes mass confusion when it comes to how we are supposed to prepare for tests.
When we all have quizzes and tests that are usually based off of these notes, we never know what is actually important.
Sometimes, most of the information is simply filler words to make the slide look presentable, because you know if they only taught us what we needed to know, then we would not be in class very long.
I am a senior now and I have always enjoyed the first day of classes.
I highly enjoy the freshly printed syllabus being handed out in class, students longing to catch-up on time they have missed with friends and the glare of the white screen staring at us all.
When I realize the class will be taught by this pale overlord, I can never tell which ideas to listen to and what to discredit.
Some professors love to make their students write every word of the PowerPoint down, and then later, cleverly make them available on D2L.
Other professors will casually put test information on the PowerPoint, but they will never tell the students.
The PowerPoint presentation is a tease.
It shows us how easy we can have the notes, but it sends us mixed signals regarding what we should do to get these notes.
I am sure most of you can agree that you have had that class where the PowerPoint notes are simply a guide, and what you should really take note of is what the professor is saying rather than the PowerPoint. They watch as we squirm in our seats frantically copying down words before they change it to the next slide.
That is just the beginning though.
The professor then lectures on the true meaning of the PowerPoint, causing us to lose our train of thought because it has nothing to do with the stuff we have copied this whole time.
Then, we fall behind, thus swirling ourselves into a state of utter confusion and mass daydreaming while the professor keeps talking.
It is something we all suffer through, but cannot defeat.
One time I would like to sit in on a class and not have to deal with just a PowerPoint presentation.
It would be great if they could just come out to us and say whether or not the notes are important or just fillers so they are not lecturing the entire time.
If you want to give us the PowerPoint notes to look at, then make them available for each day.
That way we can just write down the lecture notes.
Also, let us know what is on the tests.
Will there be questions from the presentation?
If so, then we can take them seriously.
If not, then we can just skip the useless writing of notes and focus on the issues we discuss. Professors will give up on PowerPoint presentations when politicians stop lying.
It is a never-ending cycle that will harm our kids in the future.
PowerPoints can serve a purpose for those who use them correctly or they can protect a professor who does not have a lesson plan.
Computers have drastically helped our forms of education, but they bring on a headache.
When we see a PowerPoint presentation, we feel almost powerless.
Like ants under a giant magnifying glass, we too are stuck wondering what this thing is and if it will be the death of us.