Cool Tool Week Eight - Prezi

            This week, the cool tool I chose to work with was a presentation tool everyone has seen before – Prezi. It was always given as an option in my classes for making presentations, but I always went with a standard PowerPoint. Prezi is a website that you can use to make presentations that are similar to PowerPoints, but look a little cooler. It is also stored online rather than on your computer making them accessible from anywhere, though you can still download them. In order to make a Prezi presentation, you must make a free account. There are paid accounts that have more features available, but that shouldn’t be necessary for the average person. The biggest difference between free and paid accounts is that all the Prezis you make with a free account are public, and cannot be made private. Prezi is available on both the App Store and the Google Play Store, though I'm not sure if the features would be any different.

            Prezi is a very cool thing. I’ve always been intrigued by it, but never had the push to actually go out and use it until now. I made two Prezi presentations. The first was a short and easy one I made to introduce myself to the website, and it was about E-books, this week’s topic.

           The second one I made was pretty much my major project blog post from this week summarized.

            I think Prezi could easily be used in the classroom. It definitely fulfills the technology part of TPACK. As I stated earlier, it has always been an option when making presentations as an alternative to PowerPoints. It is customized, and instead of being individual slides, it’s one big “slide” that zooms in on the information being presented. It could be used by the teacher when presenting something to the classroom, or by a student making a presentation.

            This tool would be used because it is an easy to aid one’s teaching. Since you want several different ways to give information to keep the class fresh and not boring or stale, a Prezi could be an alternative to doing traditional PowerPoint slides to give information. I would use Prezi because it is user friendly once you get a grasp on it, and it’s honestly just more fun to do and look at than a PowerPoint, or really almost any other way to present information to students.

            I believe it could definitely be used by students, but maybe not until they’re older. I had to google how to do things a few times, and there is a bit of a learning curve that I think would be difficult for younger students. Once students get to an age where they are writing papers and giving presentations, I believe Prezi would definitely be an option, especially for people that don’t have PowerPoint, because Prezi is free to use.

            Prezi is a great tool. It’s free to use, can be used by anyone that can use a computer, and is a good alternative to paid presentation options such as PowerPoint.