Thanks to my wonderful sophomore students, I had an opportunity to present, discuss, and solicit feedback regarding my take on Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, a Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Because in the future I am only allotted 50 minutes to present and respond to questions, I've taken my students' feedback and eliminated about 1/3 of the slides. Below appears the unabridged slide deck, including the 2 videos I played when I presented. Enjoy.

There's been a lot of hype over the zooming presentation tool, Prezi, which allows the creator to design the presentation in a non-linear way. I have to say I've been reluctant to embrace this particular design method because it seems to have a relatively steep learning curve (at least 15 minutes), especially when compared to something like VoiceThread, which can literally be taught to another person in a couple minutes or so.

Once you learn the basic principles of Prezi, I find that one then spends an inordinate amount of time tweaking the layout just so its amazing twists! turns! and zooms! work in the most aesthetically pleasing way. It doesn't seem to me to be a tool that emphasizes the all-important goal of clarity of communication over bells and whistles. Though it's arguably an engaging tool, I haven't seen how using it as a PowerPoint substitute makes it a transformational tool — yet.

However, that doesn't mean there aren't decent examples of Prezi out there. Check out this short presentation by Peter Pappas, who takes a great idea — reflecting on every level of Bloom's Taxonomy — and augments it with clear, concise examples and embedded videos in order to provide a model of professional development for schools.