Prezi vs. PowerPoint

Presentations are an important part of a student's educational experience. I remember using poster boards and index cards and was thrilled with the introduction of PowerPoint 1.0. Of course, that program has come a long way -- with many bells and whistles -- but the newer Prezi completely changes the presentation paradigm. This platform allows students to present their present their thoughts, hypotheses, and research in a very different way using a non-linear tool. I'm struggling a bit with a couple of issues: 1. What is the best way to "teach" the initial use of this tool? Should I organize students in pairs or small groups and have each pair/group choose a design and work on that collaboratively? The advantage would be that they would learn faster how to use the technology since they would all be struggling with the same design features and have the ability to learn from one another. I appreciated that the presenters allowed us to choose our own design -- student choice is important! However, we sacrificed the chance to learn from one another -- "Hey, try this. You can add a picture by doing ..." So is the balance more on student choice or partnering? I think, for me in terms of initial instruction on the use of this tool, it tips to partnering. 2. One of the presenters said she uses this tool with her very young students. Do they each have their own Prezi account? Or do they use the teacher's account? Would this same approach hold for older students, too? 2. I liked the use of the Prezi as an ice-breaker activity. I can see where that same activity (2 truths and 1 lie) could also be an excellent content review activity. For example, the assignment could be for each pair/group to create two accurate statements and one inaccurate statement about an assigned page from a textbook or other material. In this way, students would create their own chapter review that would be much more engaging than the standard drill and kill. I'm interested in working more with Google docs. The only one I've used so far is the one Joyce created for our blog urls. I'm going to need to do more research on this on my own! All in all, I'm excited to learn about the possibilities of these new tools. Technology rocks. (Well, except when it doesn't work.)