Prezi instead of powerpoint....

I made a prezi on symbiotic relationships in ecology. I thought I would make one to make the notes more engaging in class. Instead of just going through powerpoint slides, the animation of the prezi makes the topic seem more interesting with it's zooming features. I did get the opportunity to use it in class. The students were intrigued by something different. A couple of students said it was "raw" (that means cool from what I have gathered). When I presented this, I would ask them questions about the pictures and discuss how the examples related to the pictures. Then ask them if they could think of other examples. My favorite part is the video with the ants and fungi. They are usually grossed out at first by it, but then they can't stop watching the fungi attack the ants (you have to check it out!). That video then brings up more questions from them about the fungi, they usually ask if people can be infected the same way (as far as I know, it does not affect humans, the fungi is species specific). Here's the prezi-

Symbiotic relationships on Prezi

After the notes I showed a short video showing more examples of these relationships, I tell them to see if they can identify the relationships we just discussed in the notes. It's a trick question, the whole video deals with mutualism. Here's the video for that.

The next day I had them make a collaborative powerpoint finding describing each relationship and finding more examples of the relationships. They did the powerpoint through google docs. 

Here's are a few samples (note this was their 2nd powerpoint they did for me, and there may be several spelling errors (we're still working on citations, one thing at a time), but I thought I would leave it "authentic")

Group 1

Group 2

I like prezi for making presentations more engaging. You have to get used to the process and how to use the tools within prezi, but it's easy once you get it down. The only thing I wished I could do was make the video full screen, the video is small on the board, and also get the ad off of the video. You also have to be careful and not go zoom crazy, otherwise you may cause some seizures :-)

Resources-

www.prezi.com

www.youtube.com

google.docs.com