Introduction to Prezi

Today we were introduced to Prezi, which is an online flash application which is an alternative to Microsoft Powerpoint. Firstly we were shown a TED Talks video about Metaphors, which was shown using Prezi. Instead of the typical kind of presentation seen on Microsoft Powerpoint, there is a single huge page of which you control which parts are shown, in which order. You can use text, images and sounds like Microsoft Powerpoint, and you also can embed video. It is a much more fluent solution to your presentation needs, and also has the added bonus of being hosted online so can be accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. Also, it can be embedded onto a webpage as easy as any other flash animation/video is, which is something that Powerpoint cant do as default, or very easily.

Interface of Prezi

Our task for the lesson was to make a presentation on the topic of our choice to learn how to use Prezi and so at the end we could have a look at the different creative presentations people had made. My favourite was James Hopwood’s as his featured the number “1980” in very large font, and inside the letters there were images of 1980’s related things. This was creative and was good to watch. Mine was based on the same year, and mine simply moved between different good things about the 1980s, though I did need to tweak it so it worked better.

I personally would choose this over powerpoint anyday, and would use this in the future instead of it. It offers customisable presentations which work alot more fluently, and could be used much more effectively to get the point across. One thing i’d improve with  the technology is to make it more stable, as it is a bit buggy and does lag sometimes, which does affect the useability of the Prezi System, especially on computers with lower performance. This could be resolved with a stable .exe release with quality settings for different levels of computer power, which would also make it easier to put the presentation in a place such as a memory stick or other offline area.

The Prezi can be viewed here:
http://prezi.com/alxzzv8r0xi5/decades/