"PowerPoint." "PowerPoint." "PowerPoint." For many of us, that is probably not something new to hear. In high school and in college, PowerPoint seemed to be the universally accepted best means of relaying information. History, science, english, you name it and I've seen a PowerPoint of it. So when I was introduced to Prezi the other night during our ed. 504 class, I was certainly intrigued. Our colleagues (and presenters) made a pretty convincing case as to why one should choose Prezi over PowerPoint the next time they want to present some information visually in a classroom. Prezi is far more interactive. You can zoom from slide to slide, choose your own design and transitions, imbed photos and documents into other photos and documents, and easily set your slideshow to music among other things. As a history teacher, I can certainly see the benefits of this vs PowerPoint (this word is starting to look and sound really strange to me....PowerPoint....same effect for you? PowerPoint PowerPoint) or some other means of conveying information. If you were presenting famous battles during the Civil War, you could have a map of the Eastern side of the United States and then zoom in to a particular part of the map to illustrate a battle that happened there. Then, when you were done, you could zoom over to a different location to present another battle that happened in this new spot. In my opinion, this caters to different types of learning intelligences (as expressed by Howard Gardner) therefore making the impact and retention of the knowledge much more possible. If you wanted to do something like this with PowerPoint (ugggh), you would have to set the map on a wall or the whiteboard, or you would have to create a new slide showing the map in between the slides of information for the various conflicts. But there is a bit more to these presentation tools. Speaking of presentation tools...
PowerPoint does have its benefits. For one, it can't induce the same nausea that a poorly designed Prezi apparently can. Second, it presents things in a neat and organized fashion, and the emphasis is on the material and not on the showiness of said material. With Prezi, depending on the age/maturity of the students you are presenting to, one could run into some trouble keeping kids focused on the necessary information when they are zooming all over the place between slides. But for what PowerPoint does well, I think there are far more things that aren't so great. Along with all of the ones that I have mentioned above, you have to have the program downloaded onto your computer and if you wanted to show it on a different computer you would have to be sure that the other computer has the program as well. All Prezi needs is the interwebs and everyone has that now, except people who have dial-up...and people who don't have the internet at all (duh). Fun fact, Dial-up is actually the original inspiration for the creation of Dub Step, just ask Skrillex. Finally, PowerPoint requires constant upgrades, downloads, and takes awhile to get used to (see model below). Prezi has a simple and easy to use tutorial and can be mastered fairly quickly. So next time you are going to Prezient something, Use Prezi.
