There's a little wiggling at the bottom right corner of the screen, and a digitized paperclip begins to demean my presentation.

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 content or sleek transitions?

One upon a time, there was no such thing as Microsoft PowerPoint and animated slide transitions hadn't been dreamed of. It's so prevalent today that studies estimate 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 February 2003, government officials singled 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 professors can't seem to resist using it to keep their Friday morning classes 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 PowerPoint making University students dumber too?

Scholarly slides

A 2006 nationwide survey of faculty 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 mediums to communicate an idea is intuitively more effective than only lecturing.

"A general principle of learning 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.

Watching videos of anti-Vietnam protests, for example, is far more moving than reading about them.

Although he maintains it's a useful 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 counterproductive," RC Prof. Tom O'Donnel said.

O'Donnell compared a PowerPoint 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 mainly used to show graphs or diagrams, with other text simply serving as a guide to keep his lectures focused.

Even though PowerPoint lectures 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

With every great tool, naysayers find fault. PowerPoint's no different. It's the butt of countless jokes and the topic of many books on style and public speaking.

These qualms are all neatly surmised in an online PowerPoint presentation outlining the Gettysburg Address. As you click through the slides, you can imagine Abraham Lincoln fumbling with a projector and laptop before presenting his famous Civil War oration using graphs and bullet points. Awkward slides use graphs to show the passing of four score and seven years while lists include objectives like "Men are equal."

Complex ideas can't be presented in bulleted chunks of information, let alone be presented eloquently. Many presentations, lectures or speeches made with PowerPoint take on the tone of a corporate pitch.

One of the foremost critiques of PowerPoint was written by Edward Tufte, a scholar of the presentation of information. Tufte wrote a book called "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," which argues against the use of PowerPoint and similar programs.

Tufte claims PowerPoint slides "weaken verbal and spatial reasoning" and over complicate stories with hierarchical lists. He says that using bullet points and lists breaks up ideas and destroys complex arguments. And with an average of just 40 words per slide, PowerPoint presentations can consist of hundreds of slides that bore the audience.