Selecting the Social Media
When choosing the media, I first remembered seeing a digital story of another peer in ETEC565 in previous years. She was a colleague, a great friend, that I worked closely with in teaching over the last 4 years. I was very impressed with her digital story using VoiceThread. She was a great narrator, and the photos were well chosen. However, although I wanted to tell a similar story, I knew I wasn’t a great narrator. My enthusiasm lies in photos, and I decided to tell my story through a photoblog.
In another previous course, I was introduced to the presentation tool: Prezi. I have then kept this tool in mind when teaching, but never really finding the right time to use it. Some of the reasons may be that my Internet connection in China was slow, the tool was a bit time consuming to put together, and I just didn’t have the right story.
Now that my MET is almost over, I decided to give Prezi one last try. I had a story to tell – of how I got here – and I wanted to use it.
My Story
I had a lot of fun creating my story with Prezi. I first went through years and years of my photo, selecting ones that I wanted to show. I enjoyed my journey of pursuing Teaching as a career. The many teaching opportunities I had impacts the way I teach and think about teaching. I decided to log the most important turning points for me and placed it in a concept map manner on the Prezi board.
Next, I created folders to file my pictures of China, Japan, Mexico, Quebec, Dalian, and Beijing. It was not easy as some photos have been lost throughout the years. I then placed them around the skeleton story I have woven onto the Prezi board so I can choose the ones that I want to share in my story.
As mentioned before, I am not comfortable to add my own voice to my story. Instead, I borrowed the voice of the Co-op student who won the top prize in creating an SFU Co-op video on YouTube. I also told the story through text. I tried to make my text simple. I chose short phrases as I do not like reading pages and pages of text myself. I wanted to keep it in the manner of a PowerPoint presentation.
In the end, I really enjoyed the process of stringing the story together. It is one that I would like to keep and retell. I also like the features of the Prezi program – the ability to zoom in and out, the ability to change photo sizes and text sizes, and the ability to twist and turn, to keep the readers interested. I also like the option of having the Prezi audience view the presentation “automatically” and “manually” by hand. The one thing that I will probably go back and change is the photo sizes. I will probably have to go into Photoshop to make the files smaller so they will load faster onto Prezi. But all in all, I think it is a successful program, and I will even consider adding sound (music) to it in the future.
Teaching Value
I think Prezi is a powerful tool to tell a story. I just haven’t figured out how to incorporate it into a classroom yet. One of the options of this tool is that the viewer and copy the original and edit it on their own. I think it could be used as a short story presentation, or even in creating their own poems using a similar structure. However, I feel that TIME is the most important factor. I would generate a list of what should be expected in a class presentation. If the assignment has a limit to how many slides (paths) a presentation can have, and a word limit on each “slide”, then this may help guide the students in creating a presentation suitable for the class.
I feel that this tool can help students improve their presentation skills, especially ones that are weaker in spoken presentation (like myself). In a classroom setting, students also have the opportunity to speak while presenting – for students who are strong speakers. I would definitely like to incorporate this tool in my classroom someday, or at least, introduce this as another option for students to present. It would certainly be more interesting than the standard PowerPoint show.