7 Ways to Use Prezi in the Classroom

Heard about the coolest presentation building software in town? And no, it doesn’t include double “P”s. Prezi is forcing teachers, businesses, motivational speakers, and other presentation-givers to forget about a world where the MS PowerPoint was the only tool to use for creating classy presentation.

Prezi is quite unique in the way it offers users to build memorable presentations and bring ideas to life. All you have to do is pick a template, add your content, and then give your best presentation ever.

Teachers can find this tool very useful for engaging students in even the most boring topics. A visual and engaging “prezi” is bound to commit your lessons to their memories. Need some ideas? Here are 7 ways you can use Prezi in the classroom.

•  Present a Topic: Your Prezi could cover a not-so-interesting topic by making it more compelling with the help of strong visuals in Prezi. You may also include other media such as YouTube videos and bring a lesson to life.
• Present Historic Figures: Prezi is unlike traditional presentations that move slide by slide. With Prezi, you can have an “infinite canvas” that allows you to zoom in and out. This will work great for social studies classes where you want to sum up the contributions of a variety of famous figures. To find out more about each historical figure you can move in and out of picture to display more information.
• Spark Debates: How can a Prezi allow you to spark debates? With the help of the Venn diagram feature in Prezi you can show two sides of an argument with the help of pictures, text, or questions inside the circles. You can also edit this during class. This is much better than writing groovy essays on argumentative topics.
• Teach Students to “Sell Themselves”: Whether in graduate school or high school, it is a teacher’s duty to show students how to “sell themselves”. You can come up with a fun activity requires students to create wonderful Prezis all about themselves and why someone would want to hire them. So, this can turn into a presentation, come resume, that promotes their skills, qualities, ambitions, etc. The most creative ones should be rewarded!
• Take a Quiz: Have you ever thought of presentation quiz before? We’re sure you probably haven’t. This will require teachers to start out with a question and let students write it down before it switches over to the next question. If you’re not looking for a seriously challenging quiz, you can simply prezent the answer right after the question has been answered by the students.
• Reveal their results: Anything that promotes competition is a great way to engage students. With Prezi you can use cute avatars and reveal who came first, second, or thirdin a competitive activity you had in class. Each time, the students consolidated marks, comparison with the average, and the total marks could be shown. There are so many ways you could get creative with this!
• Cover Topics to be discussed: This is something every teacher has to present every once in a while. It can be very boring for students to follow or take any interest in what’s “coming up” next. However, with the help of Prezi, you can present semester outlines in a unique way. Each topic can be given individual attention and include visuals to make it even more interesting.

There’s really a million ways you can creative with Prezi for educational purposes. Just put your mind to it, and you’ll come up with tons of brilliant ideas that could make use of dynamic features.

Happy teaching!

Author Bio:

Christina Matthew is an academic from downtown LA. She offers academic consultancy to junior and high school students. When not consulting, she works in quality assurance for an online research firm.