Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Prezi: Man, What a Tool...

What I really liked about Prezi as a tool was how it essentially just followed the standard PowerPoint model...albeit with some especially cool and interesting features thrown in for good measure. The ultimate look of our Prezi–we went with the 'country road' design–was shockingly sleek; I still find myself having trouble getting past just how cool a lot of the stuff that we are playing around with in this class is, and the Prezi might just be the coolest thing we've gotten to use yet. By literally "sucking" you into the presentation, as opposed to just the standard Powerpoint slide-cut-slide-cut-slide-cut, Prezi not only makes your work seem more professional and top-of-the-line...but it also makes it fun. And being 'fun' is one of those things, particularly when it comes to topics like Makerspace and other educational-esque materials, that cannot be underestimated.

As I mentioned in my Inventory posting, I wrote the Inventory paper, which then I, Sue, and Jenny used as our guide when making the Prezi. Probably the coolest thing about Prezi, in my opinion, was the way that it allowed multiple users to work on a project at the same time. It was fairly mind blowing the first time that I logged on to work on the Prezi, and saw that not only did Jenny happen to be on at the same time...but I could literally see her mouse dragging and dropping various things across the screen! Talk about Big Brother!

Compared to Google Presentation or Microsoft Powerpoint, the answer is easy: Prezi takes the cake. It's just as user-friendly as both of those tools, but more importantly, the final product is just more interesting. I suppose that, if you were in an especially corporate environment, perhaps some of the additional features that Prezi offers might not be appreciated or appropriate...but in a school or library setting, where you are trying to get particular information across to your audience? It's hard to ignore just how much Prezi offers, both in its looks and its usability.

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