Okay, Prezi time! We’ll look at the usual suspects – technical and functional aspects, safety/legal and ethical considerations and finally classroom application, to determine its usefulness.
When using Prezi, the thing that hit me the most was its similarities and differences to the more traditional slide-show presentation tools like Power-point. The two tools both have the purpose of presenting information, however, using when using Prezi I felt more like I was creating a story - with fine details but also larger context. Spencer Waldron, a regional manager of Prezi, calls this effect the “conversational approach” (Waldron, 2016). It feels more like what you present visually can complement your dialogue rather than your dialogue being hinged on the visual display. To achieve this outcome, Prezi has certain functions and tools. The basic presentation tools are all there (see Fig.1) – you can insert texts, images, videos, shapes, arrows/ lines, icons animations, comments and even power-points. The site allows you to edit digital artefacts such as images, by adding other icons on top. More unique are the different background map-like and schematic themes, where you can choose the kind of schema that best represents your story. Other unique aspects are the functions which allow for zooming presentation. You can add topics, and then sub-topics (See Fig.2) and pan between them - this gives the presenter or viewer the freedom to move between topics, zoom in on small details, or zoom out to reveal greater context.
Fig. 1 & 2: Annotated screenshot of embedding digital artefacts and adding topics
Multi-author capacity and privacy control is possible, and you can control these in the settings (See Fig. 2). To add editors simply click, add collaborators, and there is an option of whether these collaborators can edit, comment or present. In terms of privacy you can make the presentation available to anyone on the web using a search engine, or you can make it available to only collaborators and those with a view link. Free versions only provide you the first option! It’s not hard to use, with basic skills of editing, and embedding required, but some things can be a bit difficult to figure out, and you need to play around with it quite a bit to feel comfortable. It helps to have your story straight, and be clear about what you want to say - what are topics and what sub-topics come under them, and how they lend to the story. Trying to figure that stuff out as you go gets confusing, and it’s a bit finicky to swap things around afterwards. Embedding images and videos also means that legal and safety considerations come into play. Like with everything, students need to understand copy-right and permission, and there needs to be parental permission if students use images of themselves or other students. When presenting research, students will need to learn how to credit the source of their information, and be careful that they do not plagiarize in how they present written text. Learning how to understand information then present concepts in their own words is a fundamental skill for adding content in all of the technologies we have explored! As there is commenting capacity, cyber-bullying and skill-building around giving constructive feed-back becomes a consideration as well. Over-all functionality makes it an exciting tool to use as a teacher. In terms of SAMR, let’s look at how using Prezi Next can have an impact in a classroom. At the level of enhancement, Prezi provides a digital substitution for paper, pen, whiteboards, and hand-made presentations. Prezi augments a students’ presentation of work as there are many tools available for editing, just one button click away. At a more transformational level, Prezi modifies group tasks as it allows groups of students, or a whole class-room to work together quickly and cleanly on one presentation, and groups can even work together from home. Teachers, using it as a teaching tool, can create a much more dynamic way of presenting, or ask the class-body to research a topic together, and present it themselves. Redefining a normal presentation, the zoom function in the Prezi presentations allows the audience to feel the illusion of movement through a story, a feeling which is impossible to achieve without digital tools. Also, not only can you collaborate together on a task, but more than one person can present the Prezi, even from different locations. Prezi taps into higher order thinking, because, in order to create a presentation, you really need to have a keen understanding of the topic, and be able to break it down into a fluid story, understanding the minutiae but also how the details fit into a larger context. I noticed this when I made my own Prezi, “The Water Cycle and Human Impacts”:
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I put myself in the shoes of a grade 7 doing a science assignment, and noticed that it requires a greater level of mental organization than preparing a normal slide-show. More than technical skills, the zooming format (topics and sub-topics) of Prezi actually demands well-structured thought, and the kind of skills that would be useful in essay writing – The topics and sub-topics are like having topic sentences and supporting sentences, and if you want your Prezi to flow well there needs to be clear links. This kind of technology could actually be used to help students learn how to structure their thoughts better and become more fluent in writing, and I would love to explore that further. Overall Prezi lends whole new dimensions to the world pf presentation-making and is certainly a tool I’d love to learn to use well for my future classrooms. Referencing: Waldron, S. (2016, December 12). Conversational Presenting is Your New Best Friend. The Huffington Post. [Web] Retrieved 13 April 2017 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/advertising-week/conversational-presenting_b_13590806.html
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