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The Many Sides of Prezi
posted on 08 May 2012 19:59 by Sara Spink
Prezi is a really versatile tool that I’ve come to appreciate not just for the opportunities it offers for presentations but also for brainstorming and organization. One of the aspects I like best is the ability to evolve my presentation alongside my research. I’ve also found Prezi to enhance the preparatory stages of my work, even when my the project itself concerns a different medium. For example, I used it to map out and keep track of the images I gathered in the course of creating a documentary video essay for The Material Culture of Twentieth-Century New York. With its infinite canvas in expanse and depth, and a responsiveness that makes it augmentative rather than disruptive to my thought process, I find that Prezi acts like a giant digital whiteboard. It allows me to think spatially and visually, and I can lay out ideas and images—ease of integrating other media like youtube videos and PowerPoints is another huge asset—to make connections and comparisons that would be difficult to ascertain without the ability to see “the big picture” in this way. For this reason, it was particularly suited to a specific project in our Scenic Design course, a “visual expression” exercise in which we assembled material that would serve as our inspiration if we were to design sets and costumes for a play of our choosing.
In terms of sharing, it also truly facilitates discussion. The possibilities of non-linear navigation permit easy access to any element of a presentation and, particularly with the ability to zoom into high-resolution images, allow for detailed side-by-side comparisons not possible with other software. The Scenic Design course offers another paradigmatic example in the Visual Syllabus our instructor initiated. We could all edit it—even simultaneously—adding our own supplementary material and grouping images and/or video before or during class meetings to substantiate the points we wanted to make.
Intuitive, easy to learn, and adaptable to a wide variety of purposes, Prezi gives users extraordinary flexibility and creative freedom in devising their final products. Presentations are portable and accessible, even offline, and easily embedded into websites. Advantageous as both a mode of presentation and an integral part of the working process, it’s also fun to use! For those who are interested, we have an extensive how-to section detailing its format and tools. Please feel free to reach out to the DML for links to examples of students’ Prezis, or to contact me regarding the work I’ve done.
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Tags: dml materialresearch presentation prezi research spink tools visualresearch
Coming to the DML blog, New Voices
posted on 13 Feb 2012 20:15 by BGC DML - Kimon
This semester, one of my hopes has been to make the DML News blog a place where people more regularly visit. Part of making that happen will be an increase in posts about outside news relevant to the DML. Some of it will w be coming from posting more about events here at the BGC that are relevant to DML activities. But, I think that the best way to make this blog more compelling will be to start to include a multiplicity of voices. To that end, this space will soon be home to posts by a number of students, faculty, and staff whose work greatly impacts or is greatly impacted by the work done in the lab. Coming up soon will be posts by DML Assistant Sara Spink and Head of New Media Research David Jaffee. The lab is about the work that we all contribute here at the BGC and it will be great to hear directly from those individuals working on projects in the lab. I hope you get a chance to read about their work and I encourage all visitors to participate in conversations via comments.
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Tags: blog dml jaffee spink
Happy Birthday Internet!!
posted on 25 Mar 2010 17:30 by BGC DML - Kimon
The Internet
In October 1969 the first message was sent over ARPANET, the earliest incarnation of the Internet. That makes the Internet 40 today!! It is kind of amazing to think of all the knowledge that gets passed through the Internet today. I imagine that back in ‘69 the creators of the Internet could never have guessed at the explosion of technology and information services that has occurred over the last forty years. The DML is only a little over two months old, I wonder where we will stand forty years from now?
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Tags: 1969 blog dml internet
