My first Prezi

Well, this week I made my first Prezi.

Gomulak-Cavicchio Solar System on Prezi

Honestly, I am not all that impressed with Prezi. Yeah, it has some cool features and neat ideas for transitions but I did not like the fact that it had to be linear, there is only one way to go through the slide show. Yes, sometimes this is good but sometimes it is fun to let the students explore where they are going. I may have had a different opinion of I had started a Prezi from scratch. I used a presentation I have done on 2 other presentation platforms. First, I created a similar presentation on Boardmaker Plus that I have actually used in my classroom. It starts with students having to correctly identifying the planets from a word bank. Then they could click on a planet to find out more. Once they were on the slide with the planet Boardmaker would read and highlight as it was speaking. Furthermore, using the symbolate tool, picture symbols are automatically added for each word and aligned perfectly. Over the summer I created a similar presentation using PowerPoint for a grad class. We were to make a non-linear presentation. I wanted to compare the two methods of presentation so I created a similar presentation. While, I was not in love with my PowerPoint, I did not hate it either. It was different. I had to find pictures of the planets and manually put them into all of my slides. A bit tedious but not insurmountable. So here I am another presentation another method. I tried importing all of my slides. That was a pain in the first place. All of the slides I took so long formatting so that the pictures were the right size and in the right place, did not transfer correctly. Prezi recognized text and images separately and not the slide as one cohesive unit. At this point, I feel confidant that I can compare all 3 equally. I have to say the winner for my current setting is Boardmaker Plus. It just fits what I need and allows me some flexibility as far as programming goes. PowerPoint and Prezi do have their advantages but Boardmaker offers more.

On another quick note. This week I am starting a temporary position for the next 3 months filling in as Temporary Classroom Skills Instructor while the person is out on maternity leave. I am excited to work on training staff but sad to be leaving my classroom behind. Hopefully, I can work more on assisting my co-workers on using some of the technology we do have. I may be posting more frequently on here as I try to add tutorials for work related items.

Until next time!