I have been getting a few emails and trackbacks to my posts on Prezi (thank you).

Since Prezi started the new accounts for educators and students, giving us more space and some new features, I thought I’d share this Prezi on how to use the system for a more ‘enhanced’ and ‘complete’ experience.

• Hint: use the full-screen option, it’s easier to read and work with.

PS. No, I am not involved with the company in any way, I just really like the product.

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I’ve extolled the virtues of Prezi before, and have shared my first example presentation (see related links below for URLs).

Now, however, the bods over at Prezi have been listening to the comments that have been posted to twitter and they’ve ‘released’ an account for educators and students.

What’s the fuss, I hear you cry? The fuss is that you can now do more, and it’s still free.

Last week there were three account types;

• Public: free, 100mb space and all your work has the Prezi watermark (not so bad).
• Enjoy: $59 per year, 500mb space, set work to private, and no watermark.
• Pro: $159 per year, 200mb space, work offline, and the same as the Enjoy above.

But now there is the ‘Edu’ packages of the above;

• Public: same as public above.
• Edu Enjoy: same as Enjoy above, but free!
• Edu Pro: same as Pro above but only $59 per year.

The Edu packages don’t have the Prezi watermark on the final presentations, but they do have a brief ‘educational’ use text shown while the presentation loads.

Upgrade
If, like me, you already had a Prezi account, you’ll find you can’t just simply sign up for the new Edu accounts. You’ll have to login to Prezi, then ‘upgrade’ your account. Enjoy.

Video
You can now embed YouTube videos in a presentation, whereas before you would have to download them and load the media file into Prezi. This is not limited to the Edu accounts.

Manual
I’ve been playing and using Prezi for a couple of months and am fairly confident I know what I’m doing (most of the time) but they have also produced this manual – Prezi Online Manual.

Interface
Another really important upgrade feature, other than the new graphical interface (not sure yet, I grew to like the old one, which is still available for the moment):

The helpful folks at Prezi have put this presentation together for you, to show you around the new interface/navigation.

Using Prezi
If you’re still not convinced about Prezi, how to use it, or whether it looks ‘professional’ or not, it was used recently at the TEDGlobal conference in July 2009 by James Geary (below)

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I’ve mentioned the Prezi system for alternative presentations before, and a few people are starting to use them too. Instead of creating ‘slides’ you work on a large canvas and make you ‘map’ of the elements and how you navigate around them. One huge advantage is that you don’t have to stick to the linear “here-then-there” presentation method, you can jump around the scene as your audience asks questions.

Here’s one I did about my iPhone; less about the content and more about what you can do in this environment. I’m forever learning, and making this was fun!

Using my iPhone / prezi.com

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We’ve all seen the presentation “Death by PowerPoint” .. if you haven’t, shame on you and go and see it now – “Death by PowerPoint / SlideShare“.

This isn’t to say that using PowerPoint is wrong, or should be stopped. It highlights the techniques that are used over and over again to bore the audience, and should wake us all up to the variety of different ways we can generate interesting design concepts to (properly) display our thoughts, theories, work, ideas, data, etc.

This is all well and good, and it can make presentations more interesting and more appealing. But what if you want to take your presenting style to the next level? What about a non-linear presentation where you need to jump around the data and results, or the theory needs overview and details all mixed up together … PowerPoint itself can’t do this easily.

Is there an alternative? Yes. While the list is fairly short at the moment, I’m sure it will grow as the advantages are realised and other providers bring out their offerings. So, what do we have;

Prezi - www.prezi.com
Billed as “the coolest online presentation tool I have ever seen” and “you no longer have slides -  you have a huge canvas to play with”, Prezi is best described by clicking below and watching their promotional presentation;

This is non-linear presenting in such an interesting way. You can It is possibly most effective when you want to present the big picture – for example a model, a timeline or a map – that becomes your canvas. Using Prezi you can zoom in on details and then zoom back out to the big picture. This kind of functionality will transform the audience experience.

pptPlex - www.officelabs.com/projects/pptPlex
Using an add-in to PowerPoint 2007 you can layout all your slides on one “canvas” and then zoom in on specific slides during the presentation. Watch the promotional video (WMV) by clicking the image below:

I’m still trying to find an actual example of a presentation made with pptPlex, so when I do I’ll update this post with the details. Without seeing it in action it’s difficult to say what it’ll be like, but it is certainly a good start in making presentations more dynamic and less linear.

Are these the only two? Well, they’re the ones I could find. A colleague found one other than showed potential …

Ventuz - www.ventuz.com. It is described as “the next generation tool for professional high-end presentations … [with] stunning 3D and multimedia content and displaying your presentations in the most effective and mind-blowing ways.”

Do you know of another? If so please share with us here.

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