I want to introduce you to a Web 2.0 tool that I was introduced to earlier this year, Prezi. Prezi is a presentation tool and the site http://www.prezi.com contains all of the information and tutorials one needs in order to create excellent presentations. Prezi is very easy to use. I was able to learn and create a prezi presentation for my class in one evening. Let me just relate to you some of the aspects of Prezi.
Prezi Desktop: You can create you presentation, edit and show your presentation on your computer without having Internet access. You don’t have to worry about the size of your presentation either, it can be as large as you want and you can store the content on your computer. Prezi saves your work automatically as you create and edit your presentation. Prezi has a native file format, .pez, so you can send and transfer your prezis as .pez files.
When you create a presentation in Prezi there are no slides as in PowerPoint. You work on one large whiteboard and all of your information, images, video clips can be place anywhere on the whiteboard. You can move, scale, rotate, zoom, and select the path in which you want your presentation viewed.
You can also create frames to group related Information and images. This is an excellent feature because one side effect of prezi is dizziness. Going from one path to the next within your presentation can cause your viewer to become dizzy so to avoid this you use frames to group information.
Our CBR team T.I.M.E.S. (Teachers Interested in Motivating and Engaging Students) used another feature of Prezi to create one of our collaborative projects, Prezi Meeting. We thanked our team member Michelle for introducing this feature to us. In Prezi Meeting you can edit and show prezis with up to nine other users.
There are six members in our group. Michelle generated the link and sent it to us. We were also in iChat so we were able to talk to each other and actually collaborate on and work on our presentation in real time. Each person appeared on the prezi screen with his or her names on a little bubble person. (I was concerned because I didn’t see my bubble person but apparently you don’t get to see yourself.) We were able to complete the content of our presentation in a couple of hours in one evening. After that we each created our individual video clips that Michelle later added to our frames in prezi. Once completed Shawn created a ScreenFlow video of our prezi and posted it for our instructor to view.
This aspect of prezi allows real-time editing and you can work together from anywhere in without having to be in the same room, city, or time zone.
You can also Add Audio. (I have not as yet created one using the audio feature.) “You can use the phone, Skype, or other application to add audio to any Prezi Meeting session. You don't need any additional web conferencing tools to work together ― just add audio and you're ready to go.”
Those of us you have already created numerous PowerPoint or KeyNote presentations can import and “Prezify” our slides. Change the slides to PDFs and import them into Prezi. You can use frames to isolate content from your slides into groups. You and also use frames to isolate and zoom into specific details on slides.
Another aspect of Prezi is that it is global. It is used by people in various countries around the world, Japan, Sweden, etc. You can even use Prezi on your iPhone and iPad.
The Prezi Community (http://prezi.com/community/) includes:
Prezi Blog
Prezi on Facebook
@prezi on Twitter
Flickr
Prezi groups on LinkedIn
Prezi on YouTube
Discussion forum where they discuss the features, functions, new ideas, and issues with Prezi.
I have already begun to introduce Prezi to my students and have encouraged them to investigate the tool for themselves. I have also introduced Prezi to my colleagues and they are excited to investigate the tool as well.
Hopefully, you have been inspired to explore this Web 2.0 tool. I will continue my exploration of Web 2.0 tools and share my findings with you in my next entry. See you soon! Now go get Prezified!
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