What is Prezi?

Prezi is a web-based application that allows users to work collaboratively to create a dynamic presentation. One of PC magazine’s top 100 websites and TIME’s top 50 websites, Prezi is adding “more than a million users a month” (Pack, 2014, p.38). Creating a Prezi is like creating a story for your students to read. In Shaadi Elswaifi’s article “On PowerPoints and Prezis”, he recommends thinking about “designing a movie” when creating a Prezi presentation. Instead of a typical PowerPoint where you go through slides linearly, the Prezi application allows you to present a bigger topic and then zoom in and out of different subtopics. This format is proven to make the content more memorable, which increases the retention of information (Prezi). It is also found to be “more organized, engaging, persuasive and effective than both PowerPoint and oral presentations” (Moulton et al., 2017, p. 31). With Prezi, you can present anywhere, online and offline. Prezi is also very user friendly with its clear instructions and how it offers multiple free Prezi templates. With Prezi the possibilities for creation are endless; you can show the life cycle of a salmon, the scale of the universe, or jazz up a math lesson!

Connections to Multimedia Learning Principles

As collaboration principle 2 states “multimedia should stimulate the effective and efficient distribution of thoughts and cognitive processes while members carry out tasks” (Kirschner et al., 2005, p. 553). Prezi allows multiple people to be working on different tasks in order to allow the concept of a presentation to be constructed collaboratively. It allows educators to use the personalization principle noting “people learn better when the words of a multimedia presentation are in conversational style rather than formal style” (Mayer, 2014). The learning through Prezi can be personal and presented as a conversation with the class over reading directly from slides. Additionally, the guided discovery principle states that “people learn better when guidance is incorporated into discovery-based multimedia environments” (Mayer, 2014). Prezi supports students getting started and offers multiple free templates to choose from.

For more connections to the Multimedia Learning Principles (such as the modality principle, signalling principle and redundancy principle) check out Erin Fletcher’s original evaluation on Prezi on her blog.

Why Choose Prezi?

Prezi is a great application to create a presentation because it includes many multimedia principles that are essential for student engagement and will enhance the overall presentation. Prezi offers a free option that gives you 100MB of storage space; “enough for a few Prezi’s” (Prezi). With the free option, all of your Prezi’s will be public. Only by paying a monthly or yearly subscription fee will you be allowed to create private Prezi’s. There are student/teacher discounts offered for as low as US$3/month. This subscription allows you to use premium images and icons, have privacy controls, PDF export and even import PowerPoint slides into your Prezi (Prezi). 

While the classic PowerPoint uses a slide to slide linear model, “the major features of Prezi are an infinite canvas and a nonlinear presentation style” (Chou et al, p. 74). 

This being said, “the nonlinear presentation style precisely depicts the essence of elaboration theory (i.e. one of instructional design principles), which provides detailed guidance for instructional sequences” (p. 74). Students have even noted that Prezi is an effective learning tool that lets them dive deeper into their learning. There are even “innovative features emphasized in Prezi that may arouse the learning interests of students, leading them to pay additional attention to learning materials” (p. 82). 

Educators Experiences With Prezi

As an educator, you can create your educator account and easily teach your students to create student accounts. You can also add a Prezi video to Microsoft Teams, in order to keep students up to date.

To dive deeper into an educator’s experience with Prezi, we decided to interview Erin Pomphery, a TTOC with the Saanich School District. This interview by Ariana Kelly was very insightful and gave us lots to think about when exploring Prezi further. Below is the audio and a transcript to that interview.

Audio Interview with Erin Pomphery

Written Transcript of the Interview with Erin Pomphery

Here is a video called “Teachers Using Prezi: Prezi Review”. It breaks-down what is beneficial about using Prezi as a teacher, and how it can be used in the classroom. This is a great video to highlight all of the amazing tools that you can access when using Prezi.

This page reviews and describes what Prezi is, as well as looking at the pro’s and con’s of Prezi for education purposes. Overall it is a great resource to look at because it is well put together, and includes real reviews from educators online.

Lastly, we included a teacher blog post about Prezi explaining how to create a video lesson using the application. Paul Tueske does a great job simplifying the information, so you understand and follow along as you work through his post. The blog post further illustrates how to prepare a Prezi video, and how to develop more customized templates. This illuminating blog post features numerous tutorial videos, showing educators how to record and share videos. Paul’s blog post is recommended for teachers who are providing remote learning opportunities for students during this uncertain time of COVID-19. We felt as though adding this blog post was very worthwhile at this time because it centers around how to create a Prezi to teach in the time of COVID-19. As Paul Tueske points out, Prezi is a great alternative to continue that connection with students in an online space. 

Walk Through of Prezi 

This video shows a walk through of a completed Prezi, and how it can look including many means of multimedia principles.

To learn more about Prezi check out the blog that they have on their website!

References

Chou, P., Chang, C., & Lu, P. (2015). Prezi versus PowerPoint: The effects of varied digital presentation tools on students’ learning performance. Computers & Education, 91, 73-82. https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/science/article/pii/S0360131515300695?via%3Dihub

Elswaifi, S.F. (2016, May 4). On powerpoints and prezis: a case for considering prezi as an alternate in medical education. Medical Science Educator, 26, 397-401.

Fletcher, E. (2020, June 24) Prezi Example. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXBehkOgZ_A

Kirschner, P. A., Kirschner, F., & Janssen, J., (2005). The collaboration principle in Multimedia Learning. In R. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 547-575). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mayer, R. E. (2014). The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. Introduction to Multimedia Learning. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/10.1017/CBO9781139547369

Moulton, S. T., Selen Türkay, & Kosslyn, S. M. (2017). Does a presentation’s medium affect its message? PowerPoint, prezi, and oral presentations. PLoS One, 12(7), 1-39, doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774 

Pack, T. (2014, April). Create eye-catching presentations with prezi. Information Today, 31(3), 38. 

Pricing plans and options. (n.d.). Prezi. Retrieved June 25, 2020 from https://prezi.com/upgrade/edu/next/. 

Rogowski, M. (2019, June). Prezi Classic Review. Common Sense Education. https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/prezi-classic 

Teachers Things That Work (2017, October 25) Teachers using Prezi: Prezi review. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPO7e2or9fo 

Teske, P. (n.d.). How to create a video lesson on Prezi Video and prepare for next year. Prezi Blog. Retrieved June 24, 2020 from https://blog.prezi.com/first-prezi-video-lesson/?fbclid=IwAR2DfzR_lJk8cq3xY87Js88PGq1W8DvlQmbrZBpGIU1yiDvTVcdvBlWjRK4