I'm torn by Prezi. It's the moral antipode to Tufte's philosophy of presentation. It seems like it should be objectively evil. But the infinite canvas aspect of it makes the slides so dense they actually kind of work for reading online; the transition animations, annoying as they are, add pacing and create a reading experience that somewhat mirrors the delivery of an actual talk.
I'd love to hear some success stories from people who have actually delivered Prezi talks in public.
I haven't tried Prezi in public. But to me, the big opportunity in this for a well-organized presenter is the ability to spatially orient your audience.
I can imagine a history lecturer creating a timeline spanning the entire length of the course, marking major events on it. When he wants to discuss a topic, he zooms in on the timeline so that the students get both context and specificity.
I can imagine an elementary music teacher designing a presentation with instruments grouped by family, zooming in first on the woodwinds, then on the single reeds, then on the saxophones. When moving to a new family, it would zoom out first to remind the students of how the instruments relate to each other.
I can even imagine any routine three-point presentation could benefit from the added context that spatial reference can provide.
Animation for animation's sake would almost certainly be detrimental to a presentation. But I'm excited about tools like this because they give good presenters the opportunity to present information in a way that wasn't previously possible.
As a someone , who tortured with Prezi on academic level : While it's cool, - for the listeners - it's hard to follow, hard to take notes and hard to make connections between slides. It can make your product presentation bearable but if your goal is teach something to someone LaTeX, Ppt etc still beats it.
Wouldn't that depend on what you are trying to teach?
There is a reason why animation is used. It's not just to show off. It actually creates new opportunities to explain difficult concepts because you can show it in a continuum rather than as slides.
Look at what it did to Roslings presentation of stastistica data.
This 'zooming interface' type of presentation could be useful for mind maps, showing where some detailed concept fits in the grand scheme of things, examples above include the history time-line. I'd be heading for a mind map approach.
I agree with one poster above: for procedures a step by step approach is probably best.
Comments
This is really slick.
I'm torn by Prezi. It's the moral antipode to Tufte's philosophy of presentation. It seems like it should be objectively evil. But the infinite canvas aspect of it makes the slides so dense they actually kind of work for reading online; the transition animations, annoying as they are, add pacing and create a reading experience that somewhat mirrors the delivery of an actual talk.
I'd love to hear some success stories from people who have actually delivered Prezi talks in public.
I haven't tried Prezi in public. But to me, the big opportunity in this for a well-organized presenter is the ability to spatially orient your audience.
I can imagine a history lecturer creating a timeline spanning the entire length of the course, marking major events on it. When he wants to discuss a topic, he zooms in on the timeline so that the students get both context and specificity.
I can imagine an elementary music teacher designing a presentation with instruments grouped by family, zooming in first on the woodwinds, then on the single reeds, then on the saxophones. When moving to a new family, it would zoom out first to remind the students of how the instruments relate to each other.
I can even imagine any routine three-point presentation could benefit from the added context that spatial reference can provide.
Animation for animation's sake would almost certainly be detrimental to a presentation. But I'm excited about tools like this because they give good presenters the opportunity to present information in a way that wasn't previously possible.
As a someone , who tortured with Prezi on academic level : While it's cool, - for the listeners - it's hard to follow, hard to take notes and hard to make connections between slides. It can make your product presentation bearable but if your goal is teach something to someone LaTeX, Ppt etc still beats it.
Wouldn't that depend on what you are trying to teach?
There is a reason why animation is used. It's not just to show off. It actually creates new opportunities to explain difficult concepts because you can show it in a continuum rather than as slides.
Look at what it did to Roslings presentation of stastistica data.
This 'zooming interface' type of presentation could be useful for mind maps, showing where some detailed concept fits in the grand scheme of things, examples above include the history time-line. I'd be heading for a mind map approach.
I agree with one poster above: for procedures a step by step approach is probably best.
Would it be easier to take notes if say you could somehow enter them in prezi?
Like - rather than a pdf of slides with space for notes, a user application for prezi where the user can enter notes for each transition?