CEdO 530 Week 4 - Prezi and the free flow of information

One of the big themes from this class is that PowerPoint has locked us into only one way of delivering information.  Endless slides with bullet point after bullet point and more words than the audience could ever absorb.  Studies have shown that people retain less when they are told the information and shown the same information at the same time.  By just using PowerPoint as a way to download information to your audience, you are actually making it more likely that they will miss your overall point.

The best way to think of a presentation is that you are telling a story.  I spoke last week about the need to set your story board and control the timing of the presentation.  This week we actually started creating the story boards for our Pecha Kucha assignments.  This is an interesting task because of the very limited nature of the Pecha Kucha format.  It reminds me of having to write a Haiku when I was back in school.  However just like the Haiku once you start investigating the possibilities you can come up with some very creative ideas in the limited space.  The storyboard is a necessity because it allows you to refine you ideas and make sure they are building to a point.

Our other assignment this week was to create a Prezi.  This assignment had multiple levels of creativity.  First of all you had to select you 6 best pictures from the 28 or more that you had taken in the last few days.  Then you had to use them to create a presentation that demonstrates what you think makes a good picture.  Here too I started with a pile of pictures, and then used Prezi to create the story board, grouping similar images and using them to build to a point.  Once I got the hang of the tool, it was actually very easy to do, and I can see that this would be a good tool for students to develop and deliver reports.  My Prezi is below: