Thing 11 - Presentation Tools

For thing 11 we took a look at Prezi. Prezi is alot like PowerPoint but is more interactive. Unlike PowerPoint the graphics move to different locations which I think will help keep the learners interested longer. It is also nice because your creations are saved on the web, so if you create it at home it will be waiting on the web for you when you get to school. You do not have to worry about forgetting it! I can see a lot of advantages with using this presentation tool in the class room. While starting a Prezi for this assignment I can see myself creating one for all of the major topics that I cover in the band class. It will also be nice to create them once and then just make slight alterations to them year after year. Here is a look at what I have created so far:

I did not get very fancy seeing this was my first one, but I am sure as I explore this tool more I will be able to use all of the bells and whistles to help keep the students focused on the lesson.

We also looked at a tool for zooming in on a website to highlight a particular picture or graph or statement. This tool was not very helpful to me seeing how it was a windows product and was not available for a mac. I also work with macs at school so it will not help me there either. I did use the zoom feature for mac (command +/-), but I did not find it very useful to use. It just makes everything bigger. Here is an example of what I could do:

I can see this being helpful so that people in the back of the room can read the words better, but that is about it for that tool.