In a recent article in the New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller reports on the pervasive use of Microsoft's PowerPoint software in the US military, and the disdain it receives from top officials. Military leaders spend a large percentage of their time preparing PowerPoint slides which they believe to dumb down discourse within important decision-making processes.

The military leaders' frustrations are not new. In a fantastic little essay, Edward Tufte (author of the influential book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) rails against PowerPoint and its lackluster ability to communicate complicated ideas. The ubiquitous business software seems designed to urge users toward diluting their thoughts into bullet points and hierarchical outlines. Like it or not, most good ideas probably aren't best communicated hierarchically.

Having recently emerged from the academic world, I have ample personal experience sitting through talks which were propped up by PowerPoint slides. They're the crutch of the academic presentation. If it is isn't bad enough that slides must accompany every talk in the conference center, they also form the backbone of most lectures in the classrooms of higher education. It's time we take a hard look at the use of PowerPoint in our learning environments and ask whether this technology is suitable for fostering student engagement and expressing challenging and complicated ideas. Better yet, we should examine where it is capable of meeting those needs, and where it is not. It's time to stop blindly relying on this tool originally designed for the company board room and instead think outside of the slide.