NOT "Death by Powerpoint"

OK, I know it's Monday morning and I still haven't written up the Library + Information Show notes but I wanted to share this with you first.
Information World Review pointed me to an article by Dave Paradi which in turn is commenting on a report in the Sydney Morning Herald about a research paper by Professor John Sweller of the University of New South Wales. If that seems convoluted then such is the interconnectivity of the "blogosphere".
Start at the beginning and you find that Prof Sweller has conducted some research into instructional design and the difficulty that students have with looking at slides at the same time as listening to someone talking and trying to write meaningful notes. This is what the Professor calls "cognitive load theory". The sensationalist reporting is more than a bit "over the top" since the original research is about the problems of split-attention and could equally well have fastened on "look at the screen and forget the voice".
A summary of Prof Sweller's paper is at http://www.iwm-kmrc.de/workshops/visualization/sweller.pdf
Dave Paradi is concerned since he makes part of living helping presenters use PowerPoint visuals to enhance their presentations--see various articles at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com