Having practiced law for 17 years, let me give you my honest opinion about Powerpoint/Prezi presentations. Don't use them as a crutch. Don't stand there and read from them verbatim. Use them because you acutally have a NEED to use them, not just for entertainment purposes. And, for God's sake, be prepared to go on with your presentation should your Powerpoint/Prezi fail. I saw opposing counsel completely lose a jury in a six-figure liability case because his opening Powerpoint wouldn't run and he couldn't do an adequate opening statement without it. Because of these factors, I rarely used Powerpoint and on the few occasions that I did, I paid my daughter, who was in elementary school at the time, to do them for me. Win-win situation.
So imaging my surprise last year when we had to do a Powerpoint presentation for class. I made what I was sure was a terrible mistake waiting until midnight to teach myself Powerpoint, but to my surprise, it was a snap of the fingers. Everything was intuitive and flowed in a linear fashion - A to B to C and so forth until you got to the end. And it was easy to add things to your slides to make your presentation more interesting. By one a.m., I was Powerpointing like a BOSS.
So for this class, we had to prepare a presentation using a program called Prezi. I will admit that I liked what I saw from the examples our instructor showed us and figured that this would be just as easy as Powerpoint to learn. I quickly learned otherwise.
From the start, it should have been obvious to me that Prezi is not linear. In reality, following a Prezi presentation can be a bit like following a drunken room of toddlers. Instead of going from point to point in a straight line, with Prezi you go here then there then back to here and then way over there and then further over that way and on and on. And intuitive? Well, maybe, but in a frustrating way because there are very few tutorials to help you figure out what to do. Heather and I were able to complete our assignment, and I will admit that I liked the ability to share the presentation on line with her and we could chat and edit on line together. But I never got past the feeling that Prezi requires almost a hive brain while Powerpoint calls for an ant brain.
But that being said, I am glad that we got the chance to work for it because our students think differently one from another. While one student may be a linear,straight line thinker who learns better from linear methods, the person next to him or her could very well be a hive brain that needs the constant stimulation and movement with a Prezi to stay focused and on-task. Thus, knowing how to use both presentation packages gives my students the opportunity to work with the one that best fits their learning skills. Sometimes it's going to be necessary to put my own preferences aside in order to allow my students to utilize tools that will help them learn. If that takes a hive-brain mentality, so be it. Students first.
