What is the Tool?
Prezi officially launched in April 2009 with the help of T-mobile, and was basically started as an alternative to the limitations of powerpoint slides. Prezi is a web-based presentation application and storytelling tool that uses a single canvas instead of traditional slides. It’s an entirely Flash-based application that lets you break away from the slide-by-slide approach of most presentations, allowing you to create non-linear presentations where you can zoom in and out of a visual map containing words, links, images, even videos. An internet connection is not needed when showing a presentation. Students and teachers can create private Prezis for free, but others must post to the company’s site.
Uses
In Prezi, you can use size and scale for layering information to avoid showing an overwhelming number of details in one view. This way your audience can focus on a specific point, without getting lost in the details. When your audience is with you, they’re more likely to ask questions and engage in dialogue – helping you make your point. The presenter flies from location to location on the canvas, sometimes turning elements upside down, sometimes zooming in or out, to explore the relationship between ideas. Like a painter, the canvas draws the developer to choose visual imagery to create the presentation, in contrast to the text-heavy, outline-based methodology of PowerPoint. For example, a Prezi on learning could start with the word “Learning” and then zoom in on each letter to find that it is composed of the elements that go into learning. The presenter zooms in and out during the presentation to illustrate the complex relationships that exist at different levels of the topic.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Prezi has about eight pre-formatted templates and you cannot change the color, font or style. However, you can upload any premade graphic and use that as your background. It is also possible to change PowerPoint slides into PDFs and upload them to a Prezi. Once you put in a font or graphic in a Prezi they are pretty static. The text does not fly in, you fly to the text. It is possible to insert interactive flash files and you can get more animation in that way, but this might be a bit easier with powerpoint. The disadvantage to Powerpoint is that it is linear, slide one is followed by slide two and so on. If you are on slide 26 and you suddenly want to show something on slide 5 you need to back up through 21 slides or stop the show, scroll through the slides till you find slide 5. This is where Prezi has the advantage, in that it’s possible for the presenter to simply click the background with the mouse and the presentation zooms out to an overview then the presenter can zoom into the area they want. When they are ready to continue on they simply click the mouse and you are back to where you left off. This makes it easy in the classroom as well as the boardroom. Prezi’s intended audience covers a wide variety of fields, from math students and teachers, to college professors and business professionals, even scientists.
To learn more about Prezi, visit:
www.prezi.com/
Prezi officially launched in April 2009 with the help of T-mobile, and was basically started as an alternative to the limitations of powerpoint slides. Prezi is a web-based presentation application and storytelling tool that uses a single canvas instead of traditional slides. It’s an entirely Flash-based application that lets you break away from the slide-by-slide approach of most presentations, allowing you to create non-linear presentations where you can zoom in and out of a visual map containing words, links, images, even videos. An internet connection is not needed when showing a presentation. Students and teachers can create private Prezis for free, but others must post to the company’s site.
Uses
In Prezi, you can use size and scale for layering information to avoid showing an overwhelming number of details in one view. This way your audience can focus on a specific point, without getting lost in the details. When your audience is with you, they’re more likely to ask questions and engage in dialogue – helping you make your point. The presenter flies from location to location on the canvas, sometimes turning elements upside down, sometimes zooming in or out, to explore the relationship between ideas. Like a painter, the canvas draws the developer to choose visual imagery to create the presentation, in contrast to the text-heavy, outline-based methodology of PowerPoint. For example, a Prezi on learning could start with the word “Learning” and then zoom in on each letter to find that it is composed of the elements that go into learning. The presenter zooms in and out during the presentation to illustrate the complex relationships that exist at different levels of the topic.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Prezi has about eight pre-formatted templates and you cannot change the color, font or style. However, you can upload any premade graphic and use that as your background. It is also possible to change PowerPoint slides into PDFs and upload them to a Prezi. Once you put in a font or graphic in a Prezi they are pretty static. The text does not fly in, you fly to the text. It is possible to insert interactive flash files and you can get more animation in that way, but this might be a bit easier with powerpoint. The disadvantage to Powerpoint is that it is linear, slide one is followed by slide two and so on. If you are on slide 26 and you suddenly want to show something on slide 5 you need to back up through 21 slides or stop the show, scroll through the slides till you find slide 5. This is where Prezi has the advantage, in that it’s possible for the presenter to simply click the background with the mouse and the presentation zooms out to an overview then the presenter can zoom into the area they want. When they are ready to continue on they simply click the mouse and you are back to where you left off. This makes it easy in the classroom as well as the boardroom. Prezi’s intended audience covers a wide variety of fields, from math students and teachers, to college professors and business professionals, even scientists.
To learn more about Prezi, visit:
www.prezi.com/
http://bit.ly/aU3ecD
My Opinion
Prezi provides a number of options that challenge the status quo of powerpoint slides, and there is a great deal of support for this software. One issue is that it is relatively new on the scene and not as readily available as the widely used powerpoint, so many administrators in education might play it safe on the sidelines for a while. Prezi’s ability to zoom in and out very quickly, along with the canvas screen that slides continuously like an i-screen will likely capture young student interest and is a valuable selling point. I also like the fact that it is interactive, much like the SmartBoards currently in use in a number of classrooms. Creativity, spontaneity and increased student involvement in day to day lessons is a major selling point for me as a future educator, and Prezi certainly seems to deliver. For now, of course, only time will tell.
My Opinion
Prezi provides a number of options that challenge the status quo of powerpoint slides, and there is a great deal of support for this software. One issue is that it is relatively new on the scene and not as readily available as the widely used powerpoint, so many administrators in education might play it safe on the sidelines for a while. Prezi’s ability to zoom in and out very quickly, along with the canvas screen that slides continuously like an i-screen will likely capture young student interest and is a valuable selling point. I also like the fact that it is interactive, much like the SmartBoards currently in use in a number of classrooms. Creativity, spontaneity and increased student involvement in day to day lessons is a major selling point for me as a future educator, and Prezi certainly seems to deliver. For now, of course, only time will tell.
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