I creatively experimented with my opening keynote for the 2010 iConnect iLearn Conference today in Colby, Kansas. My topic was “A-Ha Moments: Voice.” I created my first Prezi presentation to share these thoughts, and also solicited the ideas of conference participants on the conference Ning.
I learned a LOT creating and sharing this Prezi.
- Apparently all the functionality of Prezi does not work in the Chrome browser. (I had trouble with Prezi’s “frames.”) Next time I’ll create in Safari. (Ginger Lumen said Firefox also has some issues and recommended Safari.)
- Only one hyperlink can be “live” in a text box. Other links will be visible, but not “clickable.” If you want clickable links, you need to put them in separate text boxes. Full hyperlinks must be used, or URL-shorted links. (You can’t make an image a link, or highlight text and make it a link.)
- For some reason my older Keyspan wireless remote control would NOT work with Prezi. Apparently I didn’t have the left and right advance buttons mapped properly to left and right arrow keys. Kevin Honeycutt loaned me his Kensington remote, however, and it worked great!
- It was super to be able to DOWNLOAD an offline version of my Prezi, and play it locally instead of “live” in the web browser. The Internet connectivity at the conference has been intermittently up and down, so an offline version was critical. I also downloaded the two videos I shared at the beginning for offline viewing, using the Unplug add-on for FireFox and TubeTV to convert the downloaded FLVs to Quicktime formatted video files.
- The web browsers on my computer didn’t function “normally” when Prezi was running as a standalone app. (Maybe it’s because Apple doesn’t like Flash?) I’m not sure if this was tied only to intermittent Internet connectivity or not. They were a bit sluggish to respond, and in one case I had a browser crash in Firefox. I tried using Chrome, Firefox, and finally Safari as my default browser to display links I clicked on out of the Prezi. None of these glitches were unrecoverable problems, but they did give the presentation a bit of a “raw” and less “polished” feel… at least from what I could tell.
I’m glad to have used Prezi for this presentation, as I’ve been wanting to use it for months now but haven’t had a good venue / opportunity. There definitely IS value in experimenting with other educators using new tools, and showing how we can adapt / perservere in sharing a lesson even when all the tech parts don’t go exactly according to plan. The structure and themes of this presentation seemed to lend themselves well to Prezi. I was hoping to get even more audience participation than we did, but that was partly my fault… Allocating time within a presentation is always challenging with something you’re doing for the first time. We DID have some compelling stories about “voice” shared by participants, and it was GREAT to include those perspectives. Overall the iConnect iLearn conference is setup to have a very “unconference” approach in sessions, with lots of participation, and that’s challenging when we’re all use to “sitting and getting” for PD. I need to adapt my own presentation style more for interaction and audience participation. I probably did that better during the opening keynote rather than my two breakout sessions.
My breakout sessions today were “iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch Apps for Education” and “Share Your Ideas: Platforms for Publishing.” Here are the Ustream recordings of this morning’s “A-Ha Moments: Voice” keynote.
The recording started a little early, Kevin finishes his intro a little after the 4 minute mark in this first video:
This second video has the bulk of the keynote in it.
Thanks Ginger Lumen for Ustreaming! 🙂
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Comments
3 responses to “A-Ha Moments: Voice (iConnect iLearn 2010 Opening Keynote) – First Prezi presentation”
Looks like you had a great presentation! Glad it went well. Thanks for the five “What I learned about Prezi” tips! Those provide valuable insight to those who are just thinking about doing their first Prezi.
I really appreciate your instruction on Prezi as well as your narrative comments. So helpful for educators and non-educators