Thing #11

Presentation Tools

I created a Prezi on the Cell Cycle and cell division: http://prezi.com/cbrm_vhbf17g/mitosis/
This is a great topic for a Prezi because it is a cycle. The visual layout of a Prezi really helps communicate that concept.
I think that Prezi and PowerPoint presentations each have their place. For a concept like the cell cycle, a Prezi is a nice visual way to display not only the content of each of the stages of the cell cycle, but also shows how those stages all fit together. However, organizing the Prezi can sometimes be more trouble than it is worth. I've given students the option of creating a Prezi or PowerPoint for some of their presentation projects. One complaint that I often get is that all the zooming that Prezi does makes people a little "motion sick." Plus, unless the concept does have a nice "story" to it, Prezi just seems like a fancy, zoomy way to present the same information. But I do think that there are concepts (like the cell cycle) that would lend themselves to good, quality Prezi presentations.

One thing I did think about as I was creating this was how I was probably violating some copyright laws. I often use images (under fair use) in my presentations. But then the presentations are only available either in my classroom (during class time) or on my Moodle, password-protected site. However, creating this Prezi (at least on the free Prezi program) makes the presentation available out there on the web. So what kind of copyright issues does that bring up? If you were going to place "things" in a Prezi that would normally be okay because you were "covered" under the fair use guidelines, what happens when that Prezi is now public?

Here is a screen shot of a website with mitosis picutures that I used ZoomIt on. I think this is really nice for highlighting areas of the screen, getting students to focus in on just one section of the screen (if the page is particularly "busy"), and obviously for visually impaired students. The draw option was probably the thing that I would choose to use more often since it was so easy.