Prezi for Teachers

Teachers look for new ideas for presenting concepts and ideas to students, particularly near the end of the school year. The same old presentations and lessons don't seem to capture the attention of the classroom the same way they did toward the beginning of the year.

Prezi is one tool that makes presentations visually interesting. The teacher can create one large canvas with all the information from a section, chapter, unit, or even the year and zoom in on the details to reveal the specifics that students need to know. By starting with the 'big picture' view of everything students get the idea of what's expected of them. Then, zooming in allows them to see the details that make the difference in understanding the entire concept.

Teachers can make one Prezi for the upcoming novel students are going to read for Language Arts. They can make the entire Prezi in the shape of the author's portrait, giving students a great visual of what the author looks like. Then, zoom in to the head to reveal text, images, video, and more that help to explain the first chapter of the book.

Moving from one area to another takes students on a path through the entire book. The whole time students are reading the book themselves and then checking the Prezi to get deeper explanations of why the author chose certain characters to include in the book, audio commentaries from friends of the author, video reviews from other readers, and images the author used on their personal website to give readers an idea of who the real people were that inspired many of the characters.

One of the great things about the Prezi is the easy sharing options. The teacher can share a link in an email, embed the presentation on the class website, and allow students to watch and replay the presentation whenever they would like.

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