Sunday, July 5, 2009

Zoomable Presentations with PREZI


Press the big Play button above, and this should start the Presentation. Use the bottom right hand grey buttons, that subsequently appear, to control the slide show.

One of these buttons can be used to go full screen (and then either push it again, or push the Escape key to come back to this Blog page).

Use the right hand big grey arrow to advance through the presentation.

Prezi is a Web 2.0 tool that combines concept maps, posters, and presentations, all into one very nicely integrated unit. It allows us to create non-linear presentations where we can zoom in and out of a visual map containing words, links, images, and videos. This way we can give our Audience “big picture” overviews, as well as zooming in to view extreme details related to some items. So instead of slides, we create a large map and basically zoom around it while we do our presentation.

The underlying technology is a Flash-based presentation system that produces very dynamic presentations. We can zoom in and out across a large area (no sequential slides to step through), create a sequence path, embed images and video and do things that a fully blown Adobe Flash developer would take hours to produce. It is made by “ZuiPrezi”, who are located in Budapest Hungary.

Currently there is not any way to embed the examples that are given on the Prezi website at: http://prezi.com/showcase/ because they do not supply embed Html code.

However, an iframe can be used on a blog page to embed a Prezi like this:


The above is a sample Prezi from Peter Pappas at http://peterpappas.blogs.com .

On his page at: http://peterpappas.blogs.com/copy_paste/2009/02/how-to-embed-a-prezi-presentation-in-your-blog.html he supplies the HTML code to make the iframe.

The only problem with viewing a Prezi in an iframe occurs if we try to use the mouse wheel for zooming, because it scrolls the blog page as well !

Here is a short Introductory video from the Hungarian Prezi makers themselves :



The following 4 minute video shows how the "Ice Cream" presentation was made, so that we can see how someone uses Prezi from start to finish.



The PDF document below gives a full step by step review and set of instructions on how to use Prezi for the first time.



If you would like to have your own copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.
Alternatively, you can view or save the PDF by clicking the link below:



This next two page PDF gives a good "Quick Guide" and so is worth printing out and having alongside us to refer to while we do our first few presentations.



If you would like to have your own copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.
Alternatively, you can view or save the PDF by clicking the link below:


Prezi is certainly gaining popularity quickly, and is a nice break from one dimensional sequential slide show presentations. It would be nice if it evolves like “Slideshare” has, and we can search the Prezi site someday and find ready-made presentations, that we can either use straight away, or download and edit to suit our own needs.

So give Prezi a go, it will make for a new and interesting show, and is kind of fun once we get used to its unique "zoomable zebra" interface.

Enjoy,
Passy