Around the World in 180 Days

I had only used Prezi once, and seen it in use only a few times, before last Thursday’s collective presentation by four teachers, each from a different discipline: Evan (world languages), Cory (history), Matt (English), and Jeni (science, in abstentia).  Here’s how I experienced Prezi that night:

With Evan’s Prezi, I tried to imagine as if I were a middle school or high school student, seeing this new way of viewing language (or, possibly, history or literature or any myriad ideas).  And when I did, I felt as if I had been traveling all over the world, bouncing from North America to Europe to Africa to Asia and … the possibilities seemed almost endless.

With the transition to Cori’s Prezi, I felt as if I were back in our “History at Scales” class (EDUC 547) with Bob, changing the perspective or level of history at which we were examining history unfold through time and space, moving from Evan’s global examination of the French language to a regional, European level at which the Protestant Reformation manifested through the primary sources that Cory foregrounded.  And by this point in our Prezi experience that night, I had looked over at Casey, one of my fellow historians in Bob’s class, a few times already—simpatico, there was recognition, this was “Big History” and Prezi seemed to have much to offer our discipline, the learning process, and our students.

The journey, however, did not stop there, for Matt took us on a “romantic” (pun intended) rendezvous around the world, pursuing Romanticism’s own sojourn in different continents over the course of its life.  By this point, with Evan, Cory, and Matt all having zoomed in and out at certain parts of their presentations, and demonstrated how nesting items or files within parts of their presentation could enhance the audience’s—the learner’s—experience, I was sold.  For, in juxtaposition to this experience, earlier that day, I was helping a high school student to complete an assignment on the IOTN (Indian Ocean Trade Network), and she was having difficulty answering the questions that required of her a knowledge of basic geography (of the continents and, perhaps a bit more challenging, regions), as well as certain procedural knowledge for finding other sources of information that might better inform her and help her to answer these two questions:   “What important regions/continents are connected by the IOTN?” and “What important regions/continents are NOT connected by the IOTN?”  Part of the directions instructed her to look at the maps in the PowerPoint that was available to her via Google Docs on a classroom-provided Chromebook.  Granted, these maps focused on a particular area of the globe, but she also had, not even ten feet from her, a full-world map of the continents to her right.  With the PowerPointPowerPoint, the Internet, and the map (which I pointed out to her), she still seemed somewhat lost.  Perhaps her experience of what should have been reviewing how to read maps and understand basic geographical concepts a few weeks ago could have been better enhanced by Prezi as opposed to PowerPoint.  In our past reading of Willingham, he seems to have dismissed the idea that there are different learning styles, such as visual, aural, and kinesthetic.  Although it felt good to be needed in some way, to be able to facilitate this student's learning, I would like to think that had she experienced and learned about geography and the world through Prezi, she might not have needed my assistance for these questions.

And, on one final shift in scale apropos my digression on a recent teacher moment, Jeni’s Prezi, as presented by Matt, showed us that using Prezi can get even smaller in this set of scales of space and time, and bring us right into the classroom, whether learning about how to use one of the microscopes in the classroom or explaining how a task with different stations throughout the classroom is going to be conducted.  What her Prezi shows us (and can show our students) is that there are norms, rules, routines, procedures, and assessments that are part of the physical space of our classroom in the here and now, regardless of discipline, that can be reinforced through reviewing it via Prezi.   

Just as Phileas Fogg, the main character in Jules Verne’s Around the World In Eighty Days, has a wager to circumnavigate the world in eighty days, perhaps teachers, especially Social Studies teachers, can make a bet with themselves to help their students travel throughout our classroom, our school, our town, our city, our state or province, our nation, our continent, our world, and our universe in one hundred and eighty days.  (Well, I know, I know, “Do we really have 180 instructional days?” you might ask.  But, you get my point, right?)

One caveat I might have about the use of Prezi, though, is about the degree to which we, as teachers, might share specific information about our classroom in a public forum such as Prezi.  At least with Google Docs, we can decide to share certain folders and documents with others (although there are other concerns of saving information in some “Cloud” that might be accessed by a company that provides such a service).  With Prezi, at least based on what I know and what was presented, anyone who is browsing (intentionally or unintentionally) through Prezi could stumble upon those that you made and the (personal) information you included in them.

One final note: A technological limitation of standing or sitting right next to your computer in order to advance the Prezi could be to have some hand held presenter/pointer, but the presentation would still be limited even then unless facilitated with some handheld tablet and stylus that could be remotely connected to your laptop or desktop that would allow you to explore fully the features (zooming, scrolling, etc) of Prezi.