Prezi Pulverizes Powerpoint

Do you know about Prezi.com?

It’s not brand new, I think I’ve been using it for about a year now, and for some reason it just dawned on me that I should share about it here, in case YOU haven’t ever experienced it.

Why?

Because it has totally revolutionized the way I do presentations. (Sorry if this sounds like an infomercial. I just like sharing cool stuff with cool people).

What is it?

It’s an online presentation software, and it’s FREE (at least for the basic public license and basic education license).

That’s right, no more PowerPoint . . . not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But if you’re looking to spice things up a bit in your next presentation, this might just be the tool for you.

I’ve used this presentation software to present to parents during summer orientation, lead sessions and seminars at conferences on a wide variety of topics, conduct a social media seminar at a Divinity school, lead sophomores through a seminar on core identity, and more.

If you’ve never seen Prezi in action before, check out this brief instructional video (just over a minute). Once you get a feel for how it works, it’s pretty easy to put a presentation together in no time at all.

I have NOT used this in a worship context, and I don’t think I ever will. I want to be careful about not distracting (or overly stimulating) students in that time and space. They consume so much flashy media in the course of any given day so we hope to throw them a change-up and cause them to have to awaken to the experience they’re in. We currently use PowerPoint during our worship time—black background with white words—very simple.

I’ve also not taken Prezi into the classroom yet, but I may in the future.

If you’ve use Prezi before, what’s been the context? How did it go? How well was it received?

Do you see (or have you experienced) any drawbacks to using this tool?

Feel free to share your tips, tricks and stories in the comment section below.