Wow them with Prezi

Today I had the opportunity to start the year with my upper schoolers by giving 10 minute presentations to each grade, 9-12. It was the first day back, and I needed to tell my students about changes in the library. We (well actually the other librarians) moved all the books, interfiling reference and circulating books, changed how to print from the color printer, and made some other really not-so-interesting improvements. Changes that will help the kids, but changes that could make for a boring presentation. So I decided to make it snazzy by presenting maybe the first Prezi at my school. The kids ooohed and aaahed and asked me to teach them how to use it. Actually the tech department did too. I wish my Head of School was there to see it.

Prezi, a web based presentation program, took only a bit of time to learn. I watched the help videos a couple of times, tried making one, watched the videos again, and finally got the hang of it. It isn't hard - I just kept losing my perspective on the ever changing size of the text. I used the free version, which worked really well from my home. But when I tried it at school it wouldn't load. I don't know if it is because I didn't have the latest version of Flash or if it was blocked for some reason, but I brought a downloaded version on a flash drive which worked perfectly. Now I just have to get Prezi to work at school so I can use it more and teach the kids how to use it. Try it - maybe the kids are getting bored of PowerPoint!