Prezis

I looked into Prezis in November, but unfortunately did not get my reflections posted in a timely manner. So, here are my thoughts, based on notes I made then.

• I went to the Prezi site and looked at some of the presentations. I found them fascinating and thought that students would enjoy them as an alternative to PowerPoint slides, textual outlines, or screencasts. Students could use Prezis for reviewing material that I present in an instruction sessions and want them to use on their own. [I made notes on a couple of the Prezis that I looked at, but I have misplaced my notes.]
• I also thought that Prezis are so creative, and my thinking is generally so linear, that I would have a hard time "envisioning" my material in Prezi format. I would love to be able to pair up with someone, and explain to that person the material I would like to turn into a Prezi, and have that person design the Prezi. Then, the two of us could collaborate on editing and refining the Prezi.
• I signed up for a student/teacher free account, using the Prezi EDU education license. According to the confirmation I received, I can only create presentations online, but I can download the finished products and present them offline. There will be no watermarks. I can make them private or public. I have up to 500 mb of storage. I will need to use Firefox or Safari when creating presentations. I can download an iPad app for Prezis, so that I can see how my own Prezis or others' look on the iPad.

• Unfortunately, I never got as far as beginning a Prezi of my own. I'm hoping to do so this summer.
• If I were to create a Prezi, either on my own or in partnership with someone else (as mentioned above), here are some topics that I would like to work on. These are things that I use pretty often in my teaching. They would make great in-class teaching aids; they would also work well to assign to students for homework before class, or for review after class but before completing a graded assignment:

1. Criteria for selecting "Best Choice" items from a database search
2. Author/title searching for known items; include modifications that need to be made when moving from the WNCLN Library Catalog to WorldCat
3. Cited reference searching
4. Compositionist Robert Fulkerson's STAR criteria for guiding students in selecting outside sources for research papers. [I really like this set of criteria; I think it offers good guidance from the first-year level through graduate and faculty level.] Fulkerson says that, to be strong, outside evidence supporting an interpretation argument should be Sufficient, Typical, Accurate, and Relevant (STAR). He describes this in the following chapter: 

Fulkerson, Richard. "Making the research paper worth your time." The subject is research: processes and practices. Ed. Wendy Bishop and Pavel Zemliansky. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2001. 12-27.