Using presentations in education - moving beyond powerpoint

I have started planning towards a workshop on different ways to use powerpoint and other forms of ICT assisted presentation. The main objective is to showcase a few different ways to make ICT presentations more interesting and to provide alternatives to ‘death by bullet points’.

The other major objective is for tutors to realise that they do not need to do the work of preparing presentations but that the examples could be introduced to students. Students can then move ahead to conceptualise, prepare, construct & present the material. It makes use of the concept of the student being ‘the producer, not just a consumer’.

To start with, a couple of alternative ways to present using powerpoint can be discussed. These include using powerpoint for publishing, as a backdrop for drama productions, pecha kucha and other similar methods.

Then an introduction to Web 2.0 based presentation sites via exploration of webtools4u2use and examples in readand writeweb, cogdogroo, worsefor wear and boxoftricks. This is followed by a brief look at presentations on prezi and animoto.

In short, the workshop was to encourage tutors to be more aware of the tools, available via the web, to engage their students in using the vernacular they are familiar with to express themselves.

The dialogue which follows student presentations also provide important learning opportunities. I find that it is important to facilitate student reflection on each presentation and sometimes to summarise or make links/applications on the white board while students are debriefing. This not only provides notes for future discussion and work but also models the process of reflection.

Prezi

Prezi came via Ignatia webs. It’s a interesting presentation tool which provides a visually exciting alternative to the ubiquitous powerpoint. There are good examples in the prezi showcase including this one on why blog.

A good learning site is included which models the possibilities for using Prezi although less visual / interactive learners will appreciate the manual which provides good summaries.
Prezi is very intuitive to use. When you place an object or text on to your ‘frames’ the prezi wheel appears. This allows you to rotate the object, resize (zoom in/out) or move things around. Very cool!

I had a play and put together a presentation in about an hour, learning as I went along and experimenting with the options. Did not manage to remove some of the ‘frames’ but overall a useable presentation which I will tidy up next week.

The presentation can be assessed via the web or you can download as a zip file and run without actually having to be web connected. File is very large but opened smoothly on to my desktop.
This is possibly the best find so far this year (apart from Google books & xtimeline)