I discovered Prezi about six years ago at a PD-instead-of-a-staff meeting session. One of my colleagues shared resources to use with PowerPoint, and another introduced us to Prezi. I'd never seen it - I don't do a lot of in-class presentations (by students) so it was a cool new tool for me at the time when it didn't give me vertigo.
I still use it sometimes... I have Prezis that I like (and some that I don't). I prefer Prezi for teaching single topic or concept - anything that would take multiple days in class, I veer towards Google Slides more often than not. Here's one I use for introducing IB diploma programme courses to our grade 10 students:
There are a lot more built-in templates than there were when I first used it, and I recently received an email from the developers with a "school planning calendar for 2017".
It looked good for highlighting key dates in a month, so I thought I'd give it a try. The only thing is... everything we do at school is based on starting in September, so once I got to October-November-December there wasn't a lot to fill in, as we don't have dates for report cards, parent interview night, etc. until we start up again for the next academic year. Here's my first run-through, in case you're interested.
The thing about using templates, for me, is like re-working someone else's Word document. They format it differently than you would, they don't use tables/tab stops/headings the way you would, and let's be realistic: some people still use it like a typewriter, hitting "enter" at the end of each line. You know it's true. It's almost always easier to start your own document from scratch. So this new Prezi calendar template was good... but when I wanted to add an extra date, copying all of the bits of the "pencil" didn't always go smoothly. (And I'm still not sure why it isn't set up for the academic year...)
For those of you who've never used one... here's a typewriter:
I still use it sometimes... I have Prezis that I like (and some that I don't). I prefer Prezi for teaching single topic or concept - anything that would take multiple days in class, I veer towards Google Slides more often than not. Here's one I use for introducing IB diploma programme courses to our grade 10 students:
There are a lot more built-in templates than there were when I first used it, and I recently received an email from the developers with a "school planning calendar for 2017".
It looked good for highlighting key dates in a month, so I thought I'd give it a try. The only thing is... everything we do at school is based on starting in September, so once I got to October-November-December there wasn't a lot to fill in, as we don't have dates for report cards, parent interview night, etc. until we start up again for the next academic year. Here's my first run-through, in case you're interested.
The thing about using templates, for me, is like re-working someone else's Word document. They format it differently than you would, they don't use tables/tab stops/headings the way you would, and let's be realistic: some people still use it like a typewriter, hitting "enter" at the end of each line. You know it's true. It's almost always easier to start your own document from scratch. So this new Prezi calendar template was good... but when I wanted to add an extra date, copying all of the bits of the "pencil" didn't always go smoothly. (And I'm still not sure why it isn't set up for the academic year...)
For those of you who've never used one... here's a typewriter:
I love that the typist is wearing a smart watch!
Comments
Post a Comment