Last week I mentioned a tool which had caught my eye at CES. Prezi is an online presentation site in which you can create and download executable projects. It’s a wonderful resource since no software is necessary. I wanted to show you what my 8 year-old produced last week on Prezi. William’s second grade teacher has given them a list of options for daily spelling work each week. William has been playing around in Prezi and saw it as a great opportunity to have some fun with his spelling list. Let’s be honest, studying for spelling is not always the most fun part of the week. I’m quite sure he saw this as his chance to skip writing a long page of sentences. I welcomed his excitement as a teachable moment and was rewarded with a 100 on his spelling test last week. As an added bonus he was able to share his presentation with the whole class on their smartboard. He held his head high as he told me about the moment….priceless chance in the realm of kid confidence boosting.
I wanted to show you his work. Although there are a few details that I would have tweeked given the chance, I left his work in it’s original form for you to see. It’s a great example of the intuitive possibilities of Prezi.

The biggest difference between Prezi and PowerPoint is that the information you layout on Prezi is shown all on one “sheet”. It is your choice of scale, path, and framing that makes the slideshow occur. More detailed instruction on these issues can be found in the Prezi tutorials. I learned a great deal by browsing through the shared content that others had created. I encourage you to set up an account and play around with it.
Note: If the Prezi does not initially show up in the post, please reload the page and then click the screen to have it run.