So, I stumbled upon a
post on really bad PowerPoints, and I will admit that I was breaking nearly all of the "rules" that Seth mentions in his article. Later that day, I viewed Steve Jobs' keynote on the iPad, and I noticed that he pretty much followed along with the "rules" as well. I decided to reform myself and my next few presentations had fewer words, richer images, and allowed for more conversation. And then I rediscovered
Prezi. A colleague of mine had recommended the tool awhile back, but I had not found the time to truly explore. I chose to use the tool for my upcoming poster session at
ICE, and it was then that I also learned of the
free educator/student license which allowed for more storage, private content, and no watermark. In terms of ease of use and features, I found Prezi fairly simple to grasp, and I only had to search for help on a few items. I really like the "wow" factor of the zooming presentation, but I can imagine that this gets either old or dizzy after a while. What I really appreciated was how Prezi's editing mode made my creation process much easier and ultimately more enjoyable. Similar to a concept map or word cloud brainstorm, I just began with words or topics that I wanted to cover in my presentation. I then expanded by including images and links. Finally, I played around with layout and design. I didn't worry about theme, transitions, or how the slide looked. Instead, I focused on content and how I would be conveying my material. In the end, isn't this what matters most? From here on out, I'm recommending Prezi as an alternative (not necessarily a replacement) to PowerPoint for our teachers and students.
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