Until presenters (& teachers) learn to create and use visuals in better, more effective ways, the development of bad presentations will continue. If not in PPT, in Prezi, Ahead, and all the other new presentation tools now available.

Nicely put, thank you. I certainly wouldn’t recommend ditching the use of PPT but would love to see it used ‘properly’, or at least with a little more thought and consideration to keep the audience awake!

I often find that, during a presentation, a question is raised that is actually covered later on. While sometimes you can say “I’ll cover this later” it is also useful to be able to just quickly jump to the appropriate ‘slide’ … therefore the presenting software needs to be flexible to allow this non-linear progression. PowerPoint cannot (unless you skip forwards through slides).

I have not had chance to try pptPlex yet, but it does look more flexible / non-linear and could be even better than Prezi.

If you read my other posts I am a firm believer in a ‘considered use’ of technology, where it can ‘add value’ to what you are doing, not simply using it because you can or because you feel you should. Not everything will work in all situations. Prezi will work in a multimedia school, but an accountant might not appreciate the finer points of design and interaction (?) … the ‘considered approach’ is needed here.

Regrards, David

May I take a slightly opposing view?

I tend to work more with teachers than students these days, and there is still a huge misuse of this sort of technology, which you rightly refer to at the beginning of your post. However, simply introducing brighter and shinier technologies will not change that. So the few teachers who ‘get it’ might be able to make their sessions more interesting, entertaining and (hopefully) engaging with Prezzi and the like (and thank you to all your respondents for the new links and advice) but others will just have another tool to misuse and create disengagement.

I’m still a PPT user. I think I can make it sing and dance enough to ensure that the viewer is not put off by the technology (whether 1:1 or 1:many) and strive whenever I have the chance to help teachers understand the things it CAN do rather than the things they THINK it can do. Live internet, informative animations, timers, interactive text boxes and layered video are all possible – but rarely used.

So – whilst applauding the users of the plethora of new tools I must shout out a note of warning. Don’t let the dazzle of new stuff blind you to the potential of the old (or misuse of the new).

David

Thanks for the recommendation of http://www.ahead.com, I’ll give it a look.

John

I agree that there can be a lot of swooping and zooming, but as we control how we create the presentation surely we can build in as much or as little as we like? I spent 4 hours yesterday transforming a static PowerPoint in to a lovely little Prezi version and it is far more labour intensive to produce, but the results do show a clearer, more modern approach.

The true test will be showing it to the students, see which they would prefer to see on a regular basis. With a little experience of students and what they like (iPhone not Blackberry, Facebook not Twitter, etc) then it could be too close to call. I’ll let you know what kind of results we get.

David.