The Prezi Tool

My partner and I are researching the Prezi tool. I had some experience with this tool last semester when someone did a project in my class using it. After watching several slideshows, one slide after another after another, with people reading them to you verbatim and then clicking links to show you their corresponding videos, the Prezi's presentation was an eye opener, and a wake-up call to those of us who had mentally fallen asleep.


When he first turned to his presentation, it wasn't very remarkable. Although I knew it wasn't another slideshow- I figured it was another version of a slide to slide presentation. He was also an older student, he had a few kids and a wife so I briefly wondered if he didn't know how to use a powerpoint or if he even knew what it was, since he was using something else. So aside from knowing it wasn't another slideshow, it wasn't very remarkable at first, all we could see were the words READING DISABILITIES and then a few smaller words and pictures around the side of those words. But then he clicked for the next slide, because of course we were expecting another slide, but when instead of going to another slide the screen dove straight into the circle of the R, I was like WOAH BABY. There were tiny little letters inside that R's circle! It was like the information was hidden, but we found it- it was really cool!  Then the font that he was using made the capitol I look like a lowercase i, so after we dove into the circle of the R, we jumped out and landed on top of the little dot above the i, which had some more information on it. We, as students, were entranced. It didn't move around so much that it made us dizzy, but it was somewhat exciting to wonder where the screen was going to leap off to next. Another great thing about the Prezi is that you don't have to post video or music links that direct you off the page, as they do in powerpoints. You can post them right in your Prezi, and when the screen zooms in or out to your video, all you have to do is press play, and it's there!


I feel that this is a wonderful tool to use inside a classroom when students are taking notes, etc, because its a good way to keep them focused instead of using slide-turning powerpoints. I believe they might get redundant if used over and over again excessively, and too many turns can easily make a student dizzy, but if used for introducing a week's lesson, and created to be entertaining & instructional and not (literally) mind boggling, it can be a very effective tool, and I highly recommend it.