I just recently discovered Prezi, an online, social, presentation tool. It’s really super easy to learn if you do the little tutorial and then fiddle around a bit. I have been pretty happy using PowerPoint in my classes up to this point, but Prezi is super cool and offers special free accounts for teachers and students.
The metaphor of the Prezi workspace, unlike PPT is more of an open desktop where you can bounce around from object to object. Prezis are not organized as slides. They more resemble my actual desk at work, where things are piled everywhere and I can pick things up to look at them and then set them down and pick up something else. I don’t have to go in a linear fashion, but I can if I so desire. I can also embed YouTube videos and other files in my Prezis.
Here is a very rough prezi I made for some notes on Economics content.
I need to explore the file feature beyond just pictures and see what things look like. I also need to explore the online meeting feature and the collaborative creation features. With the little I have explored so far, I’m imagining the possibilities.
Once you create a presention using Prezi it can be saved as a compact flash file if you like. Of course, you’ll have to get your tech department at school to make sure your net nanny will allow you to use it with students BEFORE you jump into Prezi at school. I ran into issues with permissions in two places, actually getting to Prezi, and then downloading the file, which was initially blocked altogether and then, after it was unblocked, worked on my PC but not my Mac at work.
