Link: www.prezi.com
What is it? Prezi a popular on-line presentation tool that goes way beyond your typical PowerPoint. Prezi can be used by both students and teachers. Prezi offers free licenses for students and teachers.
What’s Prezi? Well.. Prezi is one of those things that needs to be seen to be understood. As so, I would encourage you to look at this sample before reading any further. In a nutshell, a Prezi presentation contains all the information you’d like to present on one huge canvas. With each click, the screen zooms and flies to the next point. If after you’d like to know more about making your own Prezis, you can follow this link.
How can it be used in the classroom? Prezi can be used whenever you or your students might use a PowerPoint presentation. A Prezi presentation can be made collaborative so a whole team of students could work on one presentation. Also check out the PreziU library which contains categorized presentations contributed by teachers and students. For my mobile blog readers, the Prezi viewer is now available for the iPad too!
Benefits and limitations: Prezi is an on-line tool. This means there’s no need to worry about USB drives or if you have access to the latest version of PowerPoint. It’s also easier to integrate YouTube video clips into a Prezi than in a PowerPoint. However, the fact that Prezi is on-line can also be disadvantage. If your Internet connection is down, so is your Prezi! Technically, Prezi Desktop allows you to download an offline version of your Prezi, but that feature requires a paid account. (Special thanks to Nancy Sher, CDC Vimont, SWLSB for inviting me to try Prezi with her English 5061-3 students.)
