This week I decided to use Prezi for my note taking challenge because I have actually never used Prezi before. I have been a PowerPoint girl most of my life. I've always been impressed, however, with the presentations I've seen people create in Prezi. Since I was new to Prezi, I decided to use one of its templates. What struck me about these templates is how much influence they have to frame your information. PowerPoint templates generally just dictate mood through color schemes, but Prezi templates actually influence the presentation of how information relates to one another. For instance the timeline template obviously creates a specific relationship to information, as do the templates emphasizing a journey. This can be really helpful if you already know how information connects, but it can also be containing, forcing to to privilege one type of relationship (i.e. chronological, hierarchical, etc). Choosing a template was actually quite difficult for me as I wasn't sure yet exactly how I wanted to represent the relationship between ideas. I chose the template I used, in part because it didn't seem to dictate an obvious type of relationship between ideas. I also thought the blaring bull horn was a nice image connecting to the idea of attention. I liked using the template as a starting place, but I think in the future I might be able to do more and be more creative if I worked without a template.
In terms of other capabilities, I appreciated that it was easy to insert media because this allowed me to include the advertisements that Medina references in the chapter. It's neat that Google image search is embedded within the program. In light of our reading on multimodality, I also decided to include an aural element and included background music. I chose AWOLNATION's "Sail" primarily for it's reference to ADD, and just because I like the song. I do wish the music automatically paused when you played a video instead of having to manually pause it. I ended up putting a note in my presentation for viewers so they would know how to prevent the overlapping sound tracks. I also think it's interesting that Prezi automatically creates a transcript of your presentation. This seems like a cool feature to aid in accessibility.
I though this program was easy to use, though I didn't get into some of the more unique things you can probably do with the program. I think students would be interested in using Prezi as an alternative to PowerPoint, and if they did you could have discussions about how they chose to relate information to each other. In terms of some potential challenges, it did look like when I signed up that collaborative Prezi's cost money, though I suppose groups could share account information. In any case, the free version of Prezi does not seem to have been created to facilitate collaboration. Some students might not feel comfortable that what they create is public in the free version. In fact
the language used to describe my Prezi on the site is "public & reusable." This reminded me of Vie's discussion about making sure students are aware of what they are agreeing to when they submit assignments through TurnItIn. I feel like you would need to have a conversation with students about what it means that they created something that is "public & reusable."
This week I looked at Heather's notes on
Easel_ly and Mike's notes in
Google Sites
Heather has definitely inspired me to check out programs to
create Infographic notes. They look professional and create a way to get key ideas to readers. I like the idea of having students create something
like this to translate the ideas from their research paper into a genre
intended for a public audience, and I may use this as part of assignment
project for this class. I do appreciate that Heather let us know that this program
isn't as intuitive as others she has used. I'll have to play around with
some of the different programs from the site she shared.
For Mike's notes, I was most intrigued by the comparison between other site builders like Wordpress. I have just started using Wordpress in any real capacity, and it would be interesting to see if with my limited knowledge I would detect the difference that Mike noted. In terms of how to use this technology in the classroom, I would also be interested, like Heather mentioned in her comment on Mike's notes, whether this could be a collaborative space. I think if so it could be an interesting place to build a course site that students could contribute to. I've also always meant to check out Google sites as a place to create ePortfolios.
Discussion of "Kim BR6-Prezi"
Great analysis of the affordance of Prezi!
I really appreciated your breakdown of the ways Prezi creates its own hierarchy upon users, unlike PowerPoint, and how this can affect students. That made me think of how the very structure / materialism becomes an affordance for student-centered teaching -- asking them to consider how and why they make the choices they make when using Prezi! Love the "sail" song -- perfect fit.Posted on 9 October 2014, 3:03 pm by Amy Locklear | Permalink
music
I haven't "played" a prezi that had background music...good to know.Posted on 29 October 2014, 5:58 am by Shelley Rodrigo | Permalink
music
I haven't "played" a prezi that had background music...good to know.Posted on 29 October 2014, 5:58 am by Shelley Rodrigo | Permalink
music
I haven't "played" a prezi that had background music...good to know.Posted on 29 October 2014, 5:58 am by Shelley Rodrigo | Permalink
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