9 V V V V V v w -w- -w- -W. -W V -V -- U 8B The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 WenedySptmbr12 007 - heMihianDaly 5 NASA thinks dumbed-down slideshows could have contributed to a deadly space accident. Is the application making University students dumber too? The basement of a building on Main Street formerly occupied by students that has fallen into disrepair, besieged by mold and plumbing problems Forgt the Needy. Save a colle student. How some of the poorest people in the nation could be living in a nicer apartment than you are SAnne Magazine ditor hen people tell you that your years in college are the best years of your life, you can take comfort in the statistical reality that, in mon- etary terms at least, they're lying. Even if your liberal arts degree and your barista skills allow you to only barely squeak past the pov- erty line after graduation, chances are you'll never live in anything approaching the squalor of Ann Arbor student housing again. With the poverty threshold for a single person at $9,250 per year, as of 2004, about 12.5 percent of Americans were living on less than $30 a day for rent, food, utilities and clothes. That may sound like an impossible feat, but in Ameri- ca, the homes of even the poorest of the poor might be more livable than your apartment. Most poor people -that is, those who bring in less than $9,250 ayear - have some amenities many stu- dents can only dream of. Accord- ing to a compilation of government reports released by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, about 65 percent of poor peo- ple have an automatic dishwasher, 89 percent own a microwave oven and more than a third own their own washing machine. To many students, especially those in the residence halls, the idea of legally owning a microwave is glamorous, and at least anecdotally, having your own dishwasher is a big deal. And though many students man- age to avoid having to trek down to the basement to use the coin laun-, dry, washing machines are just the beginning of the disparities in appliances between students and the poor. About 80 percent of poor fami- lies have air-conditioning. That might not seem like a lot, unless you consider that only about 54 percent of apartments currently listed on the University's off-cam- pus housing website claim to have AC, and in the dorms it's usu- ally available only to those savvy enough to get a doctor's note about allergies. The living spaces of the poor have more conveniences, but surely they also have less rooms to enjoy it. Dozens of poor people must be huddled in front of each air conditioner, right? Not quite. Impoverished Americans also have more space than many stu- dents. In the University residence halls, the average bedroom holds 1.6 people, according to statistics from the University Housing web- site. To put that into perspective, a building with any more than 1.5 persons in each room meets the census criteria for being "severely crowded," a rare condition even in poverty, though that figure accounts for total rooms and not just bedrooms. In terms of square footage residen feet of the ave the avt Th the bet off-cam student two roo not har of stud( poor ho rooms I Whil dents' less-tha alone, people living in that's likely not the case. The ce halls have 280 square 'more you look at the fiscal stand- living space per person, ing of students, the more tragic it rage poor person 439 and becomes. Student borrowing great- erage American 721. Even ly outpaces that of poor people, traditionally thought of as the most debt-laden class. In 2004, the most e amenities of recent year which census data was available on the topic, the bottom very poor are 20th percentile of American fami- lies carried $5,500 in total debt, ter than many $1,100 of that on credit cards. Col- lege students, on the other hand, students'. typically graduate with $19,202 in debt, according to the InCharge Institute of America, with $2,700 spus, it's hard to imagine a of that on credit cards. dwelling with more than Whether it's because of rising ems for each person, but it's tuition or predatory student lend- d to find if you look outside ers, right out of college, most stu- ent housing - 66 percent of dents are facing more economic useholds have two or more hardship than the nation's poor- per occupant. est people, though we'll at least be le it might seem like stu- used to living in an ugly apartment here's a little wiggling at the bottom right corner of the screen, and a digitized paper- clip begins to demean my presenta- tion. His name is Clippit, and he wants me to spice up my slides. Clippit says I'll get a better response if I add a funky color scheme and some animations. But it's 4 a.m. and I need to give the presentation in five hours. Should I worry about relevant con- tent or sleek transitions? One upon a time, there was no such thing as Microsoft Power- Point and animated slide transi- tions hadn't been dreamed of. It's so prevalenttodaythat studies esti- mate 95 percent of presentations worldwide are produced using PowerPoint. That's millions and millions of them every month. Lot's of University professors use PowerPoint slides in class, and even NASA engineers have employed it to make lessons on space shuttle repair more palatable. But after the Space Shuttle Columbia and its PowerPoint-trained crew were incinerated as they attempted to reenter the atmosphere in Febru- ary 2003, government officials sin- gled out the Microsoft software as a possible cause of the disaster. "PowerPoint Makes You Dumb," was the headline of a New York Times story the year after the crash. Years later, University pro- fessors can't seem to resist using it to keep their Friday morning class- es lively and colorful. So is it that much easier to Economics 101 than it is to teach NASA officials how to repair a space shuttle, or is Power- Point making University students dumber too? SCHOLARLY SLIDES A 2006 nationwide survey of fac- ulty and students by the Center for Research on Learning Technology found that two-thirds of professors use PowerPoint several times per month, and many use it every day. The conventional wisdom is that the prevalence of PowerPoint is a good thing. Using multiple medi- ums to communicate an idea is intuitively more effective than only lecturing. "A general principle of learn- ing is that people tend to connect better to ideas when you link to them in multiple ways," said Barry Fishman, an associate professor at the School of Education, who also researches learning technologies. Watchingvideos of anti-Vietnam protests, for example, is far more movingthan reading about them. Although he maintains it's a use- ful learning tool, Fishman warned it can be misused. Some professors allow students to rely too heavily on slide presentations instead of the lecture; other professors are just boring. "Constantly popping off bullet points to just go with what you're saying, I think that's counterpro- ductive," RC Prof. Tom O'Donnel said. O'Donnell compared a Power- Point presentation to a sheet of notes used in making a speech, guiding the presenter through key points and ensuring none are forgotten. In his natural science classes, slideshows are mainlyused to show graphs or diagrams, with other text simply serving as aguide to keep his lectures focused. Even though PowerPoint lec- tures have the potential to be dull or scattered, Fishman cautioned that the blame can't rest solely on the computer. "It's the job of a teacher to be compelling enough that people need to listen to them," he said. THE BANE OF BULLET POINTS slides use graphs to show the pass- With every great tool, naysayers ing of four score and seven years find fault. PowerPoint's no differ- while lists include objectives like ent. It's the butt of countless jokes "Men are equal." and the topic of many books on Complex ideas can't be presented style and public speaking. in bulleted chunks of information, These qualms are all neatly sur- let alone be presented eloquently. mised in an online PowerPoint pre- Many presentations, lectures or sentation outlining the Gettysburg speeches made with PowerPoint take on the tone of a corporate pitch. T eh z r so One of the foremost critiques of PowerPointwaswrittenbyEdward Tufte, a scholar of the presentation reducing speeches of information. Tufte wrote a book calledl"The Cognitive Style of Pow- to bullet points erPoint," which argues against the use of PowerPoint and similar pro- grams. Tufte claims PowerPoint slides Address. As you click through the "weaken verbal and spatial reason- slides, you can imagine Abraham ing" and over complicate stories Lincoln fumbling with a projec- with hierarchical lists. He says that tor and laptop before presenting using bullet points and lists breaks his famous Civil War oration using up ideas and destroys complex argu- graphs and bullet points. Awkward ments. And with an average of just 40 words per slide, PowerPoint pre- sentations can consist of hundreds of slides that bore the audience. One of his case studies involves the Columbia disaster. As the space shuttle circled the earth, NASA engineers noticed that a piece of foam debris had impacted the shut- tle's underside during liftoff. As is standard practice, engi- neers prepared a series of Power- Point slides to explain what had happened and potential outcomes to top NASA officials. But the slides weren't effective, Tufte wrote. PETER Using bullet points and the SCHOTTENFELS/Daiiy short, truncated sentences familiar An Angell Hall to PowerPoint users meant simple classroom where a ideas were condensed into techni- his lecture with a cal jargon that even NASA execs PowerPoint slide- couldn't understand. show in a class- One bullet point simply read, room designed to "Volume of ramp is 1920cu in." showcase a projec- A longer sentence would have tion screen. See POWERPOINT, page 12B frugality confines them to n-glamorous apartments, See HOUSING, Page 101B