Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Last night, I took the plunge and sat down after the kids were in bed to create my first Prezi. I felt like a toddler taking her first steps as I first stumbled around with the canvas, text tool and "zebra". After about half an hour of perplexed fiddling and referring back to the cheat sheets, I eventually got the hang of it and my presentation started to 'flow'. Drum roll, please:
What helped:
- Adding elements/text off to the side of the canvas, and then dragging them into place (rather than trying to position them correctly to start with)
- Using the 'frame' tool to group items together
- Trying to minimize motion sickness by limiting the zoom in/zoom out
- Using the 'path' tool at a distance show more than one element at a time
- Accidently grabbing the 'resize' tool rather than the 'move' tool
- Accidently grabbing one element rather than a frame
- Not having the 'path' tool cooperate with where I wanted it to go
- I just couldn't figure out the 'hidden frame' tool - it wasn't hidden and it didn't group!
I will certainly use Prezi as a teaching tool. It is appealing because allows students to process information in non-linear fashion by emphasizing connections and the big picture. This post at the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo states that "like a concept map, a Prezi presentation has the potential to help students understand the context or system in which something has meaning -- and context, as the image to the right perhaps demonstrates (roll your cursor over it) -- is sometimes highly revealing." I also like that Prezi is in the cloud and I can easily embed it in moodle or a class blog.
Prezi is a tool I would use for student projects from middle school up. I am sure kids would be engaged by its creative potential, although some patience would be needed to learn how to use it: "Designing a Prezi presentation is conceptually more challenging than PowerPoint because it lends itself to more complex arrangements of ideas, images, and facts." (Centre for Teaching Excellence, n.d.) Solution: Provide an option to use either Prezi or Powerpoint in order to meet the learning styles of all students.
References:
Centre for Teaching Excellence. (n.d.) Prezi. Retrieved from http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/teaching_with_technology/netsavvy/prezi.html
Hi Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteWell done, you survived it! Great topic choice, too. Very relevant. It would take a brave soul to try to use Prezi as a tool for student projects, but I like your idea of offering PowerPoint to Prezi as options. Great way to meet the needs and comfort level of all students.
I've realized that another option would be to give students the choice between SlideRocket and Prezi... SlideRocket being a little more straightforward than Prezi, but still being "in the cloud".
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