Scoring PowerPoints

After reading Jamie McKenzie's Scoring Power Points, I see little difference between McKenzie's description of effectively created and graded PowerPoint presentations and skillfully executed research papers or persuasive essays. The difference, however, is that a PowerPoint presentation should have main ideas, phrases, and key points rather than flesched-out sentences and paragraphs. Nonetheless, the guidelines outlined in this article would be helpful to any student preparing a presentation or any teacher assigning and grading one. Though McKenzie's rules parallel that of a good essay, he also makes good albeit obvious points about PowerPoint presentations: 

• PowerPoint presentations should never be too flashy so as not to distract that audience, and 
• Presenters should not read the material off the screen.
• Images should be powerful and
• The layout should be coherent and easy to follow.

Additionally, PowerPoint does not make the presentation. On the contrary, this is up to the presenter. Even the most well-done PowerPoint presentation can be a total bore if the presenter is not well-spoken and engaging.

I agree with McKenzie's points about PowerPoint presentations, and even though this article was written in 2000, its guidelines for PowerPoint use are still very valid today in 2013, though, let's just avoid clipart altogether, shall we?