Prezi

If you are an aspiring Mac user but are stuck with the Windows platform, specifically Microsoft PowerPoint, Prezi is a great way to make Mac stype presentations on the web.

This free online application is a simple way of creating presentations that can be shared, stored and presented on the web. The real winner however is the animation between slides, already used widely by Mac users and not available to those using Powerpoint.

The user interface is very simple to manage and although only some very basic features are available, it is still quite effective. Users are required to enter data onto a canvas, either text, images (uploaded) or shapes, and each item added becomes a new slide. Once you have finished adding data to the canvas, you join the elements with a "storyline", which when presented, is used to indicate the order in which each slide is presented.

Education users are well looked after, given free access and increased storage space and after creating an account, access is unlimited and free to all. You can sort and view presentations by friends, peers and other users very easily. A great tool for students to use without the need for saving, transporting and uploading presentations.

Some issues that I faced included:

On one occasion, I was unable to upload any images. The button just did nothing and despite a number of restarts, no luck. I was going to try using Mozilla rather than IE however upon trying again today, the feature works again.

The options are quite limited in terms of templates, however those with a big imagination will produce great things.

Prezi works best when you have a plan and a number of images ready to go. I would encourage students to search for heaps of relevant images, store them in a single folder, then begin preparing their presentation.

Some positive aspects that I discovered included:

The zebra tool is a great innovation, allowing users to zoom, rotatate and resize using the same tool. This allows you to increase or decrease the size of elements of your presentation, which is useful when you find yourself zooming out to fit in more things and finding that the font size keeps decreasing..!

There are a number of support avenues, including instructional videos, written tutorials and plenty of demo presentations.

Very simple interface, easy for students to pick up and work with.