TechnoHumanist Corner – Prezi Presentation Software

by Carlos Rodriguez

Have you ever done a presentation and wanted the audience to see The Big Picture?  Chances are that the presentation was a PowerPoint® slide presentation.  PowerPoint® is probably responsible for over 90 percent of group presentations.  To paraphrase Cole Porter’s song “Let’s Do It,” every one from the CIA to high school students do it.  Let’s do it.  Let’s use PowerPoint®.  The problem with slide presentations is that they are linear.  When things are presented in a linear fashion, it is very difficult to see The Big Picture, because people do not always think in a linear manner.  For instance, suppose you are doing a presentation of infection transmission and prevention.  On slide 18 you make the point that when handling bodily fluids, wearing gloves is one of the best ways of preventing infection transmission.  An audience member indicates that on slide 10 you said that washing your hands was the best method of infection control.  Since your slide presentations is linear, it will not be easy to jump back and forth between slides 10 and 18 to clear up the confusion. And the more slides in the presentation, the more difficult it becomes.

If you want to engage your audience, have them literally see The Big Picture, and not be bored, consider using Prezi, a new presentation software <http://prezi.com/>.  It has been described as similar to using Post-It® Notes, brainstorming, and mind-mapping.  If you can design an idea on a napkin, then you can use Prezi.  Prezi is an online, Flash-based program developed by Zui Labs in Hungary and released in December 2008.  Since it is web-based, no software need be installed on your computer unless you choose a fee-based license.  All you need to begin to create and edit presentations is an Internet connection and an account with Prezi.

How does Prezi work?

Prezi asks us to rethink how we organize and present information.  With PowerPoint®, when you prepare a slide presentation, you probably develop the slides in the order which they will be displayed.  In Prezi, all the information appears on one page rather than in a sequence of slides.  You begin with a blank page.  For some people, this is a paradigm shift.  This concept is so different from how we are used to producing online presentations that it may take time to become comfortable with facing a blank page and not having to create individual slides.  Begin by adding elements—text, images, etc.—to the page.  Since you do not have to add the elements in the order of their appearance, it may feel like you are brainstorming or doing Post-It® Notes.  You can place a variety of file formats, such as image, sound, video, and PDF document formats, in your presentations.  Here is a concept that may take you a little time to become comfortable with: The single-page layout displays all the presentation information spatially rather than in a linear fashion.  This is an advantage because the audience will be able to see the map or structure of the entire presentation.  Another advantage of the single-page layout is that if you want to review or refer to a concept presented earlier in your presentation, this is easy to do.  Instead of repeatedly hitting the Back button until you reach the earlier slide, you can move directly back to that concept with one click and not break the rhythm of your presentation.

Once you have added the elements, you can begin to organize the order of your presentation.  Since the elements are spread out on a single page and may not be next to each other, you connect them to each other by using the “path” tool and clicking on concept 1 and information chunk 3.  For example, if you are making the point that medical research requires teamwork, leadership, and perseverance, you can zoom in on an image of mountain climbers climbing to the top of a mountain summit, then zoom out.  Prezi zooms will adjust the view so that the mountain climbing image appears in the center of the screen.  Any text or images that were near the picture are either hidden or become very small so that they do not detract from the mountain climbing image.  If you rotate the image or text, Prezi will rotate the entire view and bring the text back.

Its ability to zoom in and out of presentation elements is one of Prezi’s most important features.  Zooming is done with an easy to use tool known as the Zebra Transformation tool, which consists of three striped concentric circles.  This tool enables you to adjust the placement, size and angle of any element, useful for symbolizing relative importance between the elements.  Since a Prezi presentation is very difficult to describe and it is something you have to experience, please visit the two presentations done by the Baldwin School: Baldwin School Improvement Initiatives 2009-2010 <http://prezi.com/ta4enuihhgr4/> and Baldwin Back to School Night <http://prezi.com/fttysee-3b5s/>.

To use Prezi, you must register with the company and choose the type of registration, i.e., license, you would like—Public or Fee-based.  All the license levels provide an offline player, but different amounts of storage space and additional functions or privileges.  The Public license is truly public.  It gives you 100MB of space, limits you to online editing, and saves each presentation with a Prezi watermark.  In addition, your presentation will be published by Prezi.com for the entire universe to see, so do not include any information you do not want the world to know.

There are two tiers of fee-based licenses: Private Prezi and Pro.  Each can be set up for one of three time periods: three months, one year, or three years.  The Private option will provide 500MB of server space and no Prezi watermark will appear on your presentation.  As with the Public license, you cannot do offline editing.  Using the Private license enables you to determine who can view the presentations.  The price is 39 Euros or (based on the currency exchange rate as of this writing) approximately $58 U.S. per year.  The Pro Prezi provides the same privileges as the Private license, but also includes a secure connection; 2 GB of space, and an offline editor.  The offline editor must be installed on your desktop.  The cost for the Pro license is 119 Euros or approximately $177 U.S. per year.  Regardless of the license tier, if you choose a three-year license, the annual cost per year will be less than a one-year license rate.

What are the pros and cons of Prezi?

One big disadvantage is cost: for an individual, the fee-based licenses are expensive, and the free/public option limits the program functionality significantly while eliminating the users’ privacy.  Another disadvantage is that the program provides a limited number of fonts and colors.  On the positive side, Prezi’s one-page concept allows an audience to see The Big Picture behind a presentation.  By zooming in and out, presenters can quickly illustrate detailed relationships between thoughts and concepts.  Prezi’s zooming functionality engages the audience and makes the presentation lively.  Additionally, Prezi presentations are portable.  They can run on Windows and Macs as standalone files.  Finally, Prezi’s single-page concept breaks the linear narrative rountine, and will foster better presentations.  Online presentations such as PowerPoint were created so that speakers could show their audience the salient points of their presentation.  Speakers reading their presentations from slides was never the intention.  Prezi may restore the balance in the online presentation universe.

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me at rodrigue@pobox. upenn.edu.  Since this is the last column for 2009,

Have A Safe and Happy Holiday Season!  Happy New Year!
C U NX time in 2010.

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