Thursday, October 13, 2011

Giving Prezi a second chance

For those of you who do not know, Prezi is a presentation software...an alternative to PowerPoint. It is a web-based application but you can download your presentations and play them without internet access once you have put them together.

To be honest, I haven't been a big fan of Prezi. I have seen some diabolically boring Prezi presentations full of text...and some have made me feel sea sick with all the zooming around. I don't think people know how to use Prezi any better than they know how to use PowerPoint, which proves the old adage that it is the way you use the tools which is the problem...not the tools themselves. And, once you've seen half a dozen, they all start to look the same.

But I have decided to give Prezi a second chance...especially now I have found out you can download your Prezi onto your computer and use without internet connection. I have to give a talk next week about why midwives need an online profile at the Australian College of Midwives conference. Prezi will be new and exciting to the audience there, so I think I'll give it a go and see how I get on.

Have you ever used Prezi? Do you have any particular tips or tricks about how to use it effectively that you could pass on?

2 comments:

Peter Beaumont said...

I think I relate to what you're saying about Prezi, Sarah. At first I liked the idea that you could use a large canvas to show how thoughts and ideas fit together, but was concerned that too much spinning and zooming would get in the way of learning and understanding.

I do use Prezi now if I want that large canvas. I quite like to set out a whole session/presentation outline on Prezi on the board. If there is an interactive whiteboard I can easily click on a small section to zoom in to see more text/images, and then on the side to zoom out to the big picture again. Kept simple - e.g. http://prezi.com/rtzcwfhcdkv1/make-the-web-come-to-you-simple-tools-and-techniques-to-keep-you-in-the-loop/ - this can avoid possible excesses.

This is a way of using the software that has had value for me, especially if I'm not wanting to use many images.

Sarah Stewart said...

Thanks for that, Peter...I'll certainly check out that link because I am still not 100% sold on Prezi