Musings on Prezi | Tech-Tools in Use

Recently, several of my colleagues gave a presentation on the cloud-based, potentially motion-sickness inducing (sorry if that's you), new presentation software that is known simply as Prezi.

Chris Anderson, CEO of TED (not one of my colleagues) stated that Prezi is,"...helping to reinvent the art of presentation." Bold statement. Short sighted, maybe? Regardless, Mr. TED's statement does reflect the apparent reason why Prezi got its start, which, according to my colleagues, was because people thought Prezi's older relative, Power Point, was, well, old and boring.

Prezi was designed to allow individuals to personalize presentations or to collaboratively develop creative ones. Instead of the sequentially predictable functioning of power point slides, Prezi utilizes motion to "captivate" the audience as you zoom through the story. For some viewers, this is a fun plus, but for others, it may send them running back to the steady and stomach-safe transitions of power point. My favorite aspect of Prezi, however, is the multidimensional and meaningful way in which Prezi allows you to visually explain conceptual relationships between topics.

Unlike power point, which simply moves you along from one slide to the next allowing little thought of connectivity between idea, the zooming capacity of Prezi allows its viewers to see concept connections spatially. This feature allows presenters to organize their thoughts in a very different way, and, wonderfully, it allows the viewers to follow along on the potentially crazy ride. Concept comprehension may be supported greatly by this application.

Although I am big supporter of Prezi's capacity to allow spatial organization of concepts, there are a few drawbacks that make me hesitant to encourage my students to utilize it. First, the immense potential for creativity that Prezi supports could also be its Achilles heel, at least in terms of the potential for students to become lost in the distracting world of templates, colors, and formats. If students can efficiently select the myriad options presented to them and actually get to the content, we might be in business. That is, of course, dependent upon the technological resources that are available to students. Where I am currently teaching, the school does not have the technologies necessary to support the demanding Prezi software. This limitation, if present, prevents the Prezi-plane from even getting off the ground.