Prezi

I've spent an hour or so this afternoon playing with a new website called Prezi. I first saw the site mentioned on Mark Warners blog, and I signed up for the beta. This morning I got my Beta invite.

Prezi provides a very different way of producing presentations and maybe can change the way we think about presentations.

Rather than working on separate slides, you add different elements to your page. At the moment you can add text and images and also drop videos and pdf files onto the page. You can surround these elements with a frame or leave them as they are.

It takes a while to get used to the user interface, and it's well worth watching the introductory videos first. But once you get the hang of it, it's quite intuitive to drop items, rotate them, scale them and move them around.

Once the items are on the page you can link them up into a path using the path tool. When you view an item full screen you can then move forwards and backwards along the path to the next item. Alternatively you can just zoom in and out and select different items in any order. Great for non-linear presentations where you just have slides which can be viewed in any order.



I've had a quick play with Prezi just to get my head around how to make it work. You can view my sample presentation here: http://prezi.com/9991/

If you like the look of Prezi, you might be able to get on the Beta test. Contact details are on the site and explain you are in education. Either that or wait until the site goes live, whenever that may be. You might also like to take a look at the Prezi blog which explains more about the site.

What is it?

Inspired by something my friend Laura made ages ago in Powerpoint - here's a quick presentation using that shows what happens when you mix Photopeach, a handheld digital microscope and someone with too much time on their hands.

The first presentation shows the images - show it to your class and guess what the different things are.

What is it??? on PhotoPeach



The second presentation has the same images, with the answers added as captions.

What is it? - The Answers on PhotoPeach



The microscope I used is the Easiscope, from TTS.

Enjoy!

The Big Picture

One of the nice things about using an interactive whiteboard is that it gives you the chance to use high-quality images. The fact that you can project digital images is much better than having to use overhead projectors and acetates, and much easier to use than a slide projector.

You can make an impressive start to a lesson by having a dramatic or inspiring image up on the screen as the students come into the room. The image may be something that can spark debate or discussion. They may illustrate a particular point, or be used as a stimulus for some creative writing or project work.

Recently, a fellow twitterer digitalmaverick posted a link to a fantastic set of photos from The Boston Globe of London at night, as seen from above. There are some truly breathtaking photos of a city I know very well at street level. Seeing it from a few hundred feet brings a whole new perspective on things. And as Digitalmaverick says, also makes you think about how much energy is being wasted on lights that could be switched off.


This section of the Boston Globe is called The Big Picture, and you can search its archive for more excellent images on a range of topics. There are fantastic ice sculptures, images of the Sun and The Earth from Above to name just a few. These pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope just blow me away, as do these Cassini photos.

I'm sure there are many lessons you teach that could be enhanced by some of these amazing images. Go there now and take a look! The site even has an RSS feed so you can add them to your RSS reader and keep track of the updates. The site seems add a new page of images every few days, so it's worth going back again and again.

New IWB Presentation

I've been writing a new powerpoint presentation to use on my Interactive Whiteboard training days. I've previously used an IWB file but I wanted something that had less text and a better use of images. Having it in powerpoint format also means I can share it via SlideShare which is handy.

I used the Flickr Creative Commons search tool to find images to use. I've credited those images at the end of the presentation.

This new presentation gets its first airing at my training day in Glasgow on Monday. If you are interested in coming along to any of my sessions, I've now added a Google calendar to the sidebar of my blog so you can see when they are.

Interactive Whiteboards Introduction

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: interactive whiteboard)

Blogging Presentation

Here's my presentation about Blogging for my forthcoming training day.

If you are in the UK. and do want to attend these courses, I am running three dates for Lighthouse this academic year. Click here for more information.

Blogging in Schools

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blog blogging)

New Technologies in the Classroom

Here's the powerpoint I'm using as the introduction for my New Technologies in the Classroom training day.

New Technologies in the Classroom

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web2.0 classroom)

PowerPoint

Just a very quick post to point you towards an excellent article by Ewan McIntosh explaining some ways to improve the use of PowerPoint

http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2008/06/why-would-you-u.html

Some very good points there.

IWBs and Interactivity

One thing that a lot of people get wrong is that they believe that the IWB is inherently Interactive. That just by using it, they are making their lessons interactive. This is something I try and get across in my training sessions - that you need to work a little to put the Interactive into Interactive Whiteboard.

From a posting on Classroom2.0 I came across this fantastic presentation that challenges teachers to think about how they are using this great piece of technology. I'm reposting it here, but please go to the original post to show your appreciation.

| View | Upload your own

In Plain English

Here are some great videos to watch because a) they use plain English and b) I love the clean presentation style. They cover some of the new Web 2.0 tools that have really enhanced the way people use the internet in the last few years.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English



Podcasting in Plain English



RSS in Plain English


You can find all their videos, covering Twitter, Social Networking, Photo Sharing and, erm.. Zombies on YouTube here. Or go to the CommonCraft site to download high res versions to use elsewhere.