Presentation Tools - Prezi and Glogster

Prezi

If you mention the name prezi all you will hear is fantastic things. I think I can see that there are the possiblity of fantastic things but I struggled with working out how to use it.

I did create a few simple prezis to try out a few ideas and have embedded my very basic prezi on my wiki . However, I think I will need to spend a lot of time getting to know the tricks before I come up with something great.

I did watch the tutorials which made it look fantastic but then had trouble using it. I think my greatest challenge was working out how to use the very simple tool bars.  It felt a bit like learning to ripstick to me, very wobbly and unstable in the beginning but now I am cruising. Still waiting on the cruising bit with Prezi but I know it is coming.

One feature that I think has a lot of potential is the uploading of power point slides. I did upload my power point slides into a prezi and then embedded it into my wiki but it still needs a lot of work from there which I am sure is more than achievable once you have the skills.

The other feature I discovered that was actually easy to use was the automated presentation where you can just elect the time delay.

I realise also that it is possible to add music, you tube videos and pretty much everything else.

I have spent quite a lot of time this week working with powerpoint and was a bit disappointed when I found it difficult to share independently on the web. It is possible but messy. So the fact that embedding prezis is so easy was very exciting. If you are going to spend a lot of time on creating, you want to be able to share it easily.

The zoom feature once you get your head around it is potentially the best part, particulary if the overall concept is still recognizable with the squint test as per the Prezi tutorial. I think that sums up the prezi. Squint and you can see the overall concept or idea and then you can zoom in on the detail.

Using prezi in education is certainly something I would like to do in the future. Even with my limited prezi knowledge at the moment, I can see the benefits of Prezi when it comes to collaborative brainstorming, debating and presenting ideas and much much more. I will look forward to checking out Prezi in more detail in the future.

Glogster

I have to admit, this was fun. I did have the same problem as Prezi in that it took a little while to get used to the editing features but they are all there.

I have embedded my glogster on my blog this time as well as my wiki just because it looks pretty!

As discussed in our engagement materials the potential uses for a presentation tool like this are numerous not to mention how much fun students would have. Even if the content is not their favorite, I think they would still learn content in the process of creation.

The beauty of the Glogster and Prezi is that they are the presentation tools but almost anything can be created and embedded into them so the variety of media and the related learning opportunities is vast. This means that even though the primary learning styles used in these tools is visual, they can accommodate other styles such as auditory.