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.

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This past summer at the Google Teacher Academy, I learned of an efficient way to collect student info or even create quick surveys. It's all via Google Docs, specifically the Spreadsheet function. My own knowledge of spreadsheets is woefully inadequate, since I am math-challenged. But this is just populating lists and cells, which I actually do understand! Here's how to create a web-based form from a spreadsheet:

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>Image via WikipediaAs a classroom teacher and a person who's logged on to many different computers in the course of one day, access to my browser's bookmarks had become a challenging mess. For various reasons, I might not have my laptop with me and instead be forced to use the classroom desktop computer. Or, at home, I might be working on an entirely different computer, perhaps a Mac. What if I needed access to a video or online newspaper article that I found at home and wanted to share with my students or colleagues?

How can a teacher keep all of his/her bookmarks organized and in a centralized place? One of my colleagues just emails links to himself. But he receives so many emails on a daily basis that it becomes difficult to locate the original email in his inbox! Others lose all of their precious bookmarks every year when the IT staff re-clones computers. For me, the solution I've found is something called "social bookmarking".

Social bookmarking, at its most basic, is just a website that stores all of your bookmarks online. It can also organize those bookmarks by "tags" which are named by you. Notice my tags on the left side of this page? So, for example, I teach a sociology course. I found a great New York Times web graphic on social class, which I bookmarked using two "tags" of my choice: "sociology" and "class". In the future, whenever and wherever I am, I can access all of my bookmarks, click on the "class" tag and my bookmarks are instantly reorganized by that category. I actually did this once in my American Studies class while discussing The Great Gatsby: I wanted to give the students a visual of current American social stratification for a comparison to the the 1920s.

The social bookmarking website I use is called Delicious, though there are many others. If you look to the right side of this page, you can see the latest websites I have saved (under "Recently Bookmarked"). That's the social aspect of social bookmarking: you have the ability to share your great finds with others (like course committee colleagues). Or, if you like, you can keep ALL or some of them completely private. It's your choice.

If it still doesn't quite make sense, please check out this video (above, right) from the great folks at CommonCraft that explains this concept further.

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