Prezzip - Prezi Templates

Prezzip is a website that allows users to download both free and priced templates for the use on the presentation site Prezi.  The templates are downloaded in a SWF (Shockwave Flash) file and can then be uploaded to a users presentation on Prezi.  You can currently search Prezzip for Prezis, Templates, Animations, and Pictures; so it is not limited to just templates.  The prices for the purchasable templates and other features range from $1.99 to about $15.00.  There is a Bundles option that allows users to save money by bundling various purchases together.  If you are a big Prezi users, this website might come in handy.  There are some very useful templates in the free section as well. 

For more information, here is a very short video introducing Prezzip.

Have You Seen the New Prezi?

Prezi has finally relented from their "Editing Bubble" and created a new menu feature that makes it easier to create presentation.  Although the "Bubble" was an icon for their presentation tool, it was time for a change.  The new interface provides easy access to playing your Prezi in a preview or for presentation and to edit the path.  Also, the usual features that the Editing Bubble provided are now in a menu at the top of the screen. 

This new toolbar is where you can find New Frames, Themes, Images, Videos, Power Points, and Shapes...which has a new feature containing over 200 symbols to use in the presentation.

To the far right of the toolbar you will find the settings tab which will allow users to switch back to the old version if you don't like the new version; at least till the end of the year.   Also in this area is where you can collaborate on the presentation, find help, and share the presentation.  There is also an option to print your presentation.  This option will create a PDF that you can save and print.

A quick test, reveals a much more user friendly software.  The Presentation aspect also provides a scroll bar through your presentation which makes it easier to find key points if necessary.  The other menu and editing features of Prezi have remained the same.  Prezi is a very interesting study of how a website software changes and adapts to the needs and suggestions of its users. 

Prezi U

Prezi has come around to the importance and use of Prezi in education.  The have announced the opening of Prezi U, an educational community to learn and discuss best practices for using Prezi in education.  You can also read articles and case studies about how top universities are using Prezi.  There is now one place to download content and more that is related to Prezi in education. If you have a Prezi account, you will need to sign up for a Prezi U account as well.

Prezi has also introduced some new features as well.  The + Plus button which allows the easy creation of a Prezi in just a few clicks.  See video below.

Even More Prezi Updates

In case you have never read this blog, I am a huge fan of Prezi.  I remember using it when it first came out and thought it was neat, but lacked a user interface that made sense and thought it was to difficult to use.  Throughout the past two years though, Prezi has worked hard at improving their product.  They have actually listened to their customers.

Some of the recent updates are:
1.) The Zebra tool got a new look.  You can click a + or - size to increase font size or drag the zoom in and out feature to the size you need.
2.) Resizing of frames has also improved.  It used to be one directional, but now you can resize the frames to meet your needs.
3.) Mentioned in another post, you can now bend lines as well.
4.) There is also a supplemental menu when you right click in your Prezi now.
5.) Line Snapping allows you to make sure that your line is at the right angle or not...especially horizontal. 

For more information and to see the changes in action, see the video below

More Prezi Updates

Prezi continues to add updates to their software and each update provides more flexibility and options when using this presentation tool.  I have written about different ways to use the application and you can see previous posts here.  Here are some of the changes:

1.) Image cropping - Prezi now provides the ability to crop a photo within the Prezi software.  No more editing a photo before uploading it.  You can do that within the program.

2.) Arrows and Lines - You can now bend arrows and lines to make them curve providing more functionality with them.  Once you draw the line you can also re-size them.  You used to be able to make them bigger or smaller in terms of zooming, but now you can make them short or longer after the fact.

To see these changes in action, check out the video below:

Something else cool that Prezi is messing around with is the ability to use motion capture (Like the XBox Kinect) to manipulate and move the presentation just by moving your hands.  Talk about a completely interactive presentation!  They are also working on a remote control app for your iPad.  If you ask me, Prezi has evolved and continues to evolve so much more than PowerPoint ever did. 

You can read more about the cool things mentioned above here: Prezi Blog Post

Prezi Theme Wizard

Prezi, one of my favorite new tools has finally created a Theme Wizard for their colors and fonts, thus allowing for even more personalization.  They have also made it a lot easier to embed a YouTube video as well by providing a simple URL copy and paste window.  Below you will see three screen shots and each one will explain what the new Theme Wizard allows you to do.

Theme Wizard Page 1 allows users to select various background colors as well as upload a logo to the presentation.  The logo is limited to a 250x100 pixel image.

Theme Wizard Page 2 allows users to choose both the font AND color for the Title 1, Title 2, and Body text. 

Theme Wizard Page 3 allows users to choose the colors of the various frames, the shapes, arrows, and lines, as well as the highlighter color. 

What is great about the wizard is that as you make the changes, the wizard shows you what your changes will look like, so there is no going back and forth seeing how your presentation will look.  If you prefer not to use the wizard, you can also click on the "Manual" button and it will allows you to type in the color reference keys that you would like for your presentation.  This has taken a great product and made it even better. 

Prezi for iPad

I am a huge fan of Prezi.  I have probably mentioned it over a dozen times on this blog.  I don't see it as a savior for presentation tools, just as an alternative for PowerPoint.  Remember though, it is not about the tool it is about the tool user.

Prezi took a step for its users by making Prezi available for iPad.  I recently got an iPad for work and am thoroughly enjoying using it.  I have been struggling for ways to use it though, and the creation of a Prezi App helped me to discover a new way.  You can learn more about the Prezi App in the iTunes store.  To see it in action check out the video below. 

10 Alternatives to PowerPoint

PowerPoint is one of those software that most teachers are willing to jump right in and learn because they see it EVERYWHERE.  I myself am guilty of over-using PowerPoint to the "point" that it was an ineffective teaching tool.  Now that I am out of the classroom, several other options for lecture are available for teachers to use that provide more engaging and effective methods of teaching.

1) Probably the most notable and most widely used is Prezi.  I have written about Prezi several times and you can see those posts here.  Another option is a software called Ahead that uses the similar Zoom features.  I have had little experience using it solely because I have been more impressed with Prezi.  If you are someone who is determined to use slides, Slide Rocket is an option I recommend because it allows you to easily share the presentations over the web with students.  If doing a PowerPoint Presentation is completely necessary, then I would recommend viewing the Do's and Don'ts of PowerPoint.

2.) Digital Story Telling - A picture is worth a thousands words.  We have all heard that saying.  If that is the case, wouldn't this be a great way to lecture?  The great thing is that there are so many Digital Story Telling tools available on the web to use that you could always use a different one to keep the presentation format fresh.  You can read about several digital story telling tools here.  Choose one and try it out.  Use pictures to convey meaning.


3.) Glogster is a great tool and has been one of my favorites for the year.  A lot of teachers view it as a great tool for student presentations.  I also view it as a great tool to use for lectures.  With the ability to embed video, audio, and links, it because a fully interactive presentation tool.  If you can make students use it for presentations, why not use it for lecture?

4.) In college, every professor was a lecture king.  That is the way I was taught.  Rarely was I provided visuals or supplements for a lecture.  I might have been provided an outline, but not much else.  If you are giving a lecture to students, take them to the computer lab and allow them to participate in a lecture using a Back Channel Chat.  This can turn a standard oral lecture into an engaging discussion.  When you mention something and students have more questions about it, they can ask without interrupting.  It makes for a great interactive lecture.  There are several options for Back Channel Chat: Todays Meet, Typewith.me, and TitanPad for starters.  For math teachers, it might be a good idea to use a site like Twiddla so that you can work on math problems collaboratively. 

5.) Use Skype and have a guest lecturer speak to your class.  Use a site like Wallwisher for students to engage in a discussion with each other, you, and the guest following the lecture.  Have students prepare questions ahead of time for the guest.  Bringing an expert into the classroom is a great way to engage students in a new way.

6.) Comic Strips are a growing aspect of education.  More and more sites allow teachers and students to create comic strips for no cost at all.  A good idea might be to turn your normal Power Point into a cartoon lecture.  Provide spaces in the comic for students to fill in the blanks or answer questions.  You could engage students by asking them what they think might happen in the next frame.  You could also expand on the lecture and have students create their own comic strips based on your lecture or create the next lecture for you.  You can find information about comic strip sites here

7.) Another great option that goes right along with comic strips are cartoons.  There are a couple cartoon creating websites available out there, Go Animate and Xtranormal to name a couple.  Something tells me that it would catch your students attention if they walked in class and watched a cartoon for their lecture and had to take notes.  You could stop the cartoon at any point to allow questions or cue students.

8.) Use Twitter with your lecture.  Create a PLN and share your lecture topic a couple days before.  Use a Hashtag and ask questions to other educators that relate to your lecture topic.  Create an interactive lecture with students.  Teach Paperless has a great example of how Twitter enhanced his lecture.

9.) As mentioned above, it might be worth while to create a Wallwisher for your lecture and allow students to comment and share their thoughts and questions about the lecture.  You might provide further discussion based on the student's responses. 

10.) You may have used some of these options.  You may be a teacher who just lectures orally.  Expand on that lecture by copying and pasting your lecture and creating a Word Cloud.  Use a site like Wordle and help students get a better grasp of what was discussed most in your lecture.  Chances are your test will appear similar to what words appear most in the Word Cloud.  If it does not, you might want to compare your lecture with your test again.

My TeachMeet KY Presentation

From my previous post about Technology Alternatives for the Standard Homework Assignment I will be presenting the following presentation at TeachMeet KY in Bowling Green.  Thought I would share it with my readers.

Prezi Meetings - Collaboration

Prezi has come out with something new; Prezi Meetings (Read review by Mashable) and get a tutorial from the Prezi Blog.  Each person will be provided an icon on the presentation editor.  As you edit, it updates real time.  Think of it as TitanPad for creating a Prezi presentation.  When you access Prezi you will notice a "Meeting" link in the menu in the top right hand corner.  If you click on the "Invite to Edit" link, it will provide a link (that expires in one week) that you can send to people in an email for them to collaborate.  You can have a maximum of 10 people collaborating on a presentation.  If you click on the "Start Online Presentation" you can invite people to remotely view the presentation...LIVE.  This is a great addition to Prezi.  See image below of menu.

When it comes to classroom use, if you have a person (or you) who is familiar with Prezi, you can invite people to edit a presentation with you and then you can work on learning the software together.  You can do the same thing with students, especially if you have students who are experts and can help novices.  The remote presentation allows you to show one presentation to multiple classrooms at the same time.  Be a great way for teachers to collaborate with each other.

Friday Focus - My First Digital Publication

Recently I have been seeing numerous and wonderfully put together digital magazines involving integrating technology in the classroom.  Seeing them motivated me to create my own.  So often, we as teachers (myself included) are throwing up PowerPoint as our main form of enhancing lecture, as well as integrating technology.

Students are burnt out on PowerPoint.  We use it to much, and we have them create them to much.  Slide Shows are great, but they are no longer the only method of delivering lecture notes to your students.  Plus, how is that making lecture interactive with your students?  How are they LEARNING from your lecture notes if all they do is copy them down?

I recently did a presentation at the TeachMeet Nashville Conference on using Web 2.0 to enhance lecture. I created my presentation using Prezi.  I wanted to be able to enhance that presentation, so I created a digital magzine.  You can find my publication here.  I used word and then uploaded it using Issuu.  You can also see the publication on the sidebar of this blog at the very top.  Click on the center of the publication and it will open full screen.  Or, you can see it below.



I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, ideas, or ways that you have improved lecture in your classroom using Web 2.0.

TeachMeet Nashville 2010 - Presentation

Here is the presentation that I am presenting at TeachMeet today in Nashville about using Web 2.0 tools to supplement your lecture.  It also offers way to take Web 2.0 tools and have your students do your lecture for you.

TeechMeet Presentation on Prezi

A Few New Web 2.0 Tools

A great way to create online Photo Books is through Picaboo.  It is a software that requires you to download it, but it offers a great way to create photo album on your computer with a lot of great features.  There are tons of tools for your photo book that allow you to customize how it looks.  You can add backgrounds, custom layouts, text boxes so you can label your photos.  You can also organize your photos to create a story flow so that your pictures go in sequential order.  There are also several other tools that could be used for a personal or school projects.

You could easily have your students use Picaboo to do a biography project in your class over an author, scientist, historical figure, etc.  Would be a great way to present information to the class, especially with the ability to add text and put in sequential order.  I suggest that you download and try it out yourself to see if there can be an educational application in your classroom.

Preceden is a simple timeline creation tool.  It is free to use.  It would be ideal if you wanted to do the events from a major world war because it would be easy to track different battles.  It would be great in WWII because you could show all the different campaigns on one timeline because of how they are color coded.  It is really difficult for students to understand that multiple events happen in history at the same time and textbooks do a horrible job of conveying this a lot of the time.  Preceden would be a great way to follow events.

On a completed timeline a description of the events is listed below the actual timeline.  Each of those events has a "go to" link that will take you to it on the timeline.  You can also print the descriptions of each event allowing a student to turn in a paper if need be.  You can see a sample of a timeline here.  It is the timeline of Preceden.

Headmagnet is a Flashcard creation tool unlike any others you will see.  I could give a description and tell you about it, but there is no reason to reinvent the wheel.  Richard Byrne of Free Technology 4 Teachers does a great job of explaining what this site can do as well as providing a video.  I highly suggest that you subscribe to his blog if you have not already.

KeepVid allows you to take the streaming video from sites like YouTube and download them.  This works great because you can download the files as a Flash file and then easily upload them to a site like Prezi.  You can add a Toolbar link so that when watching the video, it will start to download.  It is a great feature to use in schools because of all the other problems with YouTube.  It would be a way to keep those videos you love and show in class without all the distractions that come from YouTube.

Must See Monday #6 - Ahead - Playground for Creative Minds

As most of my readers know, I am a big fan of Prezi.  I recently wrote a post about other ways to complete lecture other than Power Point.  Upon completing that post, I discovered another option; Ahead presentation software.  It was also suggested in a comment on my Blog.  So I thought it was only appropriate to discuss it today.

Ahead is very similar to Prezi.  It has a 3D canvas for creating your presentation.  It allows you to zoom in and out on aspects of your presentation.  What I like about it compared to Prezi is that you get more options for creating your presentation, especially when it comes to fonts and text.  It bodes itself as "No Coding, No Boundaries."

Ahead is for people with more tech savvy backgrounds, but for those that are not, I highly suggest that you visit the tutorial for help creating your presentation.  Another benefit is that it gives you the option of 25 prearranged slides if you have a fear of an infinite open space to work on...might be useful for those wanting less freedom.

When creating your presentation, you create scenes, which can be put in order within your presentation.  That is how the software knows where to go in your presentation.  You can upload any file to the presentation, video, audio, picture, PDF, etc, however, it does take some time to upload the file, so you might want to upload any files to the presentation to start with, so they are ready when you need them.

It definitely takes some getting used too, but it is definitely worth looking at to help change up your normal lectures.  You could easily copy and paste from your old Power Point Presentations as well.  My suggestion, is just visit the site and play around for a while and see how you might use it....that is what i did.  When you visit the homepage, click on the arrows in the bottom of the right of your screen and go through to learn about Ahead.  Here is a screen shot of the homepage.

You can follow the company on Twitter.  I am, so that I can make recommendations for education use and licensing.  You should follow them too and make the same suggestions!

Think Twice Thursday #5 - Oh Come On...Not Another Power Point?!?!

Now, let me start off by saying that I am probably one of the most guilty users of Power Point in my classroom.  I created and have a Power Point for every unit that I teach.  I can only imagine how boring it was for my students after the 2nd unit to see me start up my computer and projector to begin another section of lecture using Power Point.

Power Point is a very useful tool.  It is a very easy way to present information.  It is a very easy way to organize information for students.  It is very easy to add pictures and video.  It is also very easy to use wrong and use slides the wrong way.  It is also very redundant, and thus, very boring.  Students are tired of Power Point.  Most of them will tell you they have done more Power Point than any other kind of projects.  How many Power Point Presentations have you created???

Five years ago...heck, two years ago, Power Point was THE method of using technology in the classroom for many teachers.  Because of Web 2.0, teachers have more options for presenting content to their students.  So with this post, I make a suggestion.  Think Twice about using Power Point for your next lecture presentation.  Instead, use some of the other tools out there.

Digtial Story Telling - Use sites like PhotoPeach (which you can turn your presentation into Quizzes) or Animoto.  Tell your lecture through pictures.  You can also download Photostory 3 from Microsoft.  Another option is Voicethread and make the lecture more interactive.  Storybird would be another option, and your students could add to the lecture

Glogster - Make a lecture into a Glog.  You can easily link to outside websites that enhance your lecture and then return back to the Glog.  Embed videos and audio clips for your students to watch and listen to while you take a break from the lecture.  A great change of pace to Power Point, with some of the same features.

Prezi - Take that linear Power Point Presentation, and put it on a 3D canvas.  Upload videos, pictures, and PDF's.  Zoom in and focus on a certain aspect of your presentation.  Students who have not seen Prezi, will probably be more attentive in class that day seeing you use a new presentation tool.

Comic Strips and Cartoons - Yes...Comic Strips and Cartoons.  Make your lecture into comic books.  Make it entertaining for your students.  Imagine the reaction students would have that day if you had a cartoon for their lecture that day.  You can visit my previous post for information on Comic Strip and Cartoon websites.

Virsona - Create lecture from the perspective from someone in history in the form of a chat.  Let your students ask the questions to lead the lecture.  You can see my blog post about it here.  Or for entertainment purposes, you could use a site like Blabberize, and record the lecture ahead of time.

Timeline - There are plenty of Timeline Applications on the web.  You can visit my blog post about them here.  Take your lecture to a new level and present it in a timeline, giving your students chronological order within the lecture, helping students with their organization.

Again, don't get me wrong, Power Point is great...but it is time that we rethink or Think Twice about how we use it in our classrooms.

Friday Focus #6 - The New Prezi

Power Point has always been one of those staple technology applications in education.  A way to present material to students that also offered the opportunity for audio, video, and picture integration to make lecture more...interesting.  However, in 2010, Power Point has started to become mundane. Prezi is a new presentation tool that offers a new approach to presenting information.  It can be easily described as creating a presentation on a 3D canvas.  

I created an original post on Prezi at the early stages of this blog.  Of course at the time of the original Blog Post I had not come to fully understand the expansiveness as well as the limitations of Prezi.  There were originally no plans for Educational Licensing and its ease of use for the average person was rather frustrating.  Within my blog I have linked to two presentations.  One I create about Hands On Learning.  The other was a Math Presentation created by a teacher at my school.

Recently though, Prezi has changed their thinking.  First they offered Educational Licensing.  You can still get the standard Free account, but there is an "Edu Enjoy" account that allows privacy settings, removal of the Prezi Watermark, and 500 MB of online storage space.  A great addition to an already interesting presentation tool.  You can pay $59 for a year subscription and it gives 2000 MB of online storage space, plus the ability to create Prezi offline using desktop software.  Not a bad price. 

If you already have an account using your school email address, log in and then click on "upgrade."  Click on the Education option and you will be able to upgrade to the Education Account.  You will have to confirm your email address again.

Prezi didn't just add Education licensing either.  It improved the tool used to create Prezi's, as well as new backgrounds, colors, fonts, etc.  The first picture is the old tool for Prezi.  The second picture is the new tool for creating Prezi...a more simple user interface.

When you visit Prezi now, it shows a video so that you can get a better idea of how to get started creating your own presentation.  Adding text is a lot easier as well as adding effects to the text.  Before you always had to go to the tool to change text, now, one click does one thing, and two clicks does another...MUCH easier.

You can easily interchange between the different fonts and colors.  I wish there were more options here instead of changing colors over the entire canvas, there was more individual options.  Creating your path is a lot easier as well with a drag and click feature.  There are also Zoom In and Out buttons so you don't always have to use your scroll.  It still has the same framing and drawing tools as well.  You can also load images, videos, and PDF within the Presentation.

But with all of that...the best feature...UNDO and REDO!!!!  

If you have not tried Prezi, I highly recommend using it once and see your student's reaction to it.  It will be such a wonderful change of pace from Power Point.  

Friday Focus - Online Timeline Creation

It is hard to imagine a middle or high school student who has not done a timeline in some class throughout their education experience.  As teachers we all have generally assigned one to students where they use their textbooks, find the date, and tell the importance.  Well, with the implementation of websites dedicated to timeline creation, those days can be over...and your timelines created by your students will really catch your attention, as well as visitors to the website.  There are five basic websites for creating timelines that I will be discussing today and in no particular order.  Xtimeline, Dipity, TimeToast, TimeGlider, and Capzles.

Before I begin my examination I do want to mention that Prezi would be a great way to create timelines.  I got this idea while on the Forum at Classroom 2.0 from Jeremy Cunningham.  He provided a link to timlines created on Prezi....what a great idea!

Now on to Timeline websites.

- Probably the best because it has made part of its focus education.  The timeline itself has a lot of neat features.  The zoom feature makes it easy to move from one year/decade to another, so if you are doing an exapnsive timeline, that can come in handy.  I have added am image below of the textbox you get to use to create your entry in the timeline.  The only feature I don't like it time and time zones...for most assignments in high school I don't think that will matter, however it does give you the option to not use time in the preferences section.  You can add links to a URL and pictures to the timeline as well.  It has a pop up calendar so that you don't have to enter in the date if you would prefer to look it up.  Overall, I think that TimeGlider would be a great addition to any project.  It does require email and password setup, but does not require email verification to use.  Something that is always a plus.

- First thought....Email Verification.  So if your students need to use this site, they have to have their email verified first.  When you create your timeline, you give it a category.  You can also apply an image to it, which would come in handy for those visual learners.  The Event box is very simple: title, date, description, link, image.  Nothing new there.  However, It does have add a Time Span.  This is a great feature because so often events in time do not last one day...so that gives Timetoast a feature the others do not.  The viewing feature is easy as well.  Just hover over the event and you can get a short description and an image (if included).  Click on the event and you get the full write up.  Below is the Add Event Screen.

- No Email Verification required which is a great plus.  Creation is great.  You can give your timeline a custom URL, so students could easily use something that as a teacher you would know (Last Name, Nickname, etc.).  You can add a photo, as well as place it in a list of categories.  Students can also give it tags making searching for it a lot easier.  A Description of the Timeline is also required.  When adding an event, you can even download or upload them if you have done them earlier in class in an Excel Document.  Adding an event gives you all the normal options.  So far the main difference from the ones mentioned above is that you can embed HTML code, which would be great for videos.  Another great feature is at the end of the Add Event page, there is a box for source.  Even though the site does not require a source, as a teacher, you can...another great feature.  Viewing is easy as well.  It shows the event, you click on it, in the window you can go forwrds or backwards and see very entry, or exit out and see the whole timeline.  You are also given the option to print the timeline as well.  You can also view it in outline form, or full view.  A very useful timeline website.

- Dipity is an interesting timeline site.  What I like about it is that it is very detailed.  What I don't like about it is that it will generate a timeline for you.  So a students could search the web for Pearl Harbor and it will generate a timeline for that event based on entries from a web search, and then it would appear that a student completed it, without really doing any work.  So ease of use for a student is not the best, because it took me a bit to figure out where to start a blank one.  Once I did find that, you get all the usual features as the other ones.  Dipity would be better served as a resource for research than for creation.

- Capzles is a neat little website.  Now, it is not necessarily a timeline of historic events, but a way for you to document an event as it happens using pictures.  Think of it as a Digital Story Timeline.  You put the pictures in the order things happened, with a little text on top of the picture, and you have a timeline of your event.  Would be great to document a field trip, but not necessarily for a histoircal timeline.  Still a site worth checking out.

Have your students used any of these sites?  If so, comment and post a link to your students creations.  Have you used any of these sites?  What were your experiences.

Hands On Learning

I gave a presentation today to some business and political leaders in our county.  The presentation was about how our school is using technology to increase Hands on Learning by our students.  For my opening to the presentation I created a Prezi about the "Then and Now of Hands on Learning in Education."  I thought I would share it with you all. 

Now what is interesting, and would appreciate your thoughts and comments on, is in 10 years, what will we be adding to the list of "Now or in 10 years will our "Now" be "Then?"  Will we move that quickly in Technology Integration in Education?  If you think back, Power Point is about 10 years old......

Math Prezi Presentation

A teacher at my school created a Prezi over Series and Sequence for his Algebra II class.  Przei would be a great way for teachers to break away from the Power Point driven lecture.

Digtial Presentations - For You and Your Students

We are all guilty of exhausting our kids with Power Point Presentation Lectures.  We are also guilty of assigning the students a Power Point Presentation for a project.  Time to think outside the PPT Slide Box.  There are multiple ways to complete presentations.  Two of those I will showcase below.

PREZI!

Prezi - Prezi is a web-based software that you can use to create a presentation that will then be emailed, downloaded, embedded using Adobe Flash.  The neat thing about Prezi is that the entire presentation is viewable at the same time on the screen.  You can embed pictures as well into the Presentation.  It is gerat for those short lectures that you need to make for your students, and since it is something new you will catch their attention.  There are different backgrounds for you to choose from as well as a few different colors of text.  You can easily move the text, enlarge the text, or change the direction of the text.  Once you have provided all the information, it will then allow you to choose the path the presentation should follow. After more review, the best way to think about Prezi is a 3-D view of a slide presentation. Think of it as a 3-Dimensional Box.  Here is a link to a Prezi that shows some of the Tips and Tricks that you can do with a Prezi.  Just press the arrow and go through the Presentation.

Glogster - Think of a Blog, but think of it in Poster form.  Now take away the Blog thought and think about the ole $.50 Posterboard you make your students buy for a project and throw that out as well.  Time to think about having your students create a Glog.  Glogster for Education allows the teacher to set up a virtual class for their students.  It will generate Usernames and Passwords (Random letters and numbers) for you to give to your students.  You can then monitor your students work as they progress along on their Poster.

So what can Glogster for Education do?  Everything.  First you start with a blank slate.  Choose your background color or design.  You can then add graphics and text of any kind.  You can attach pictures, as well as embed video and audio.  You can even add links to outside webpages that will open in a new window as well.  One of the things I like about Glogster is that when you put in text that is longer than the area you are allowed to type in, it generates a scroll so that you can scroll through the information.

This would be a great way for students to complete presentations over anything.  All the normal Posterboard presentations could now be completed on a Glog.  I do advise that school teachers/systems make sure that the site is unblocked and that fonts are not blocked by your firewall.  That was the problem at our school.

Here is a Link to a Glog that I created showcasing what a Glog can do and look like. Glog Sample