Have You Heard of PREZI?

Are you tired of seeing and making the same, boring PowerPoint presentations for various classroom projects? Have you ever heard of Prezi? Prezi is an online presentation tool that turns those flat PowerPoints into fun and engaging presentations that are sure to wow your classmates. You can even convert your current PowerPoint presentations into Prezi Presentations!
Here's a YouTube video of an awesome Prezi
It's very simple to use! Prezi is a free tool with a multitude of fun templates that take your presentations to the next level. You could of course buy Prezi, which contains more tools and templates, but I think this is a great website for students and teachers who want to make a simple, yet interesting, presentation.
There's even a free upgrade for students and teachers with an .edu email! (More applicable for college-age students, but they're still students nonetheless)
The other great part of Prezi is the "Collaboration" feature. With this feature, you're able to collaborate with up to ten people in real time--meaning you don't have to log off in order for someone else to use it. Each collaborator has an avatar so that you're able to see who is editing what.
Prezi is also available for the iPad, which I think is awesome. Now-a-days, especially for college-age students, more people are buying and using iPads to take notes in class instead of investing in an expensive computer. With Prezi for the iPad, students will be able to work on their presentations on the bus ride home, on the train, in the car... anywhere!
Ever since I was first introduced to Prezi last year, I've never made another PowerPoint presentation. I truly believe both students and teachers would love using Prezi for their future presentations. It's fun, interactive, and (most importantly) FREE!! How much better can it get?!
Have you used Prezi? What do you think?

Collaboration Canvas

This week I "remixed" another student's PLAYground canvas that focused on the creation of walls and barriers through music. As a a future English major, I'd like to show students how music and art have also managed to break walls and break barriers between different groups of people. In my canvas, I wanted to show different musicians and poets who were made famous through some of their social commentaries on race, class, sexuality, and gender. I mostly focused my lesson on Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" (which was originally a poem written by Abel Meerolpol) and how that song possibly could have impacted a highly racist society like it was during the 1930s and 40s.  I also provided links to other songs/poems that are social commentaries. I think that music is the spoken form of poetry, and it's very important as an English class to look at the literature that it's composed of. Here's the link to my canvas. Enjoy!

Do You Have a Favorite Technology?

As I thought about this week's post, I started drawing blanks. I've come to realize that in my many years of being in public institutions with up-to-date technologies, I cannot think of one technology that I truly enjoyed or even benefited from. I remember having a SMARTBoard, which we never used, and we frequently utilized the COW (Computer On Wheels) in gradeschool, but there was never a technology that made me think "Wow, I've learned so much." Even today as a senior in college I have not yet found a course that fully utilizes some form of technology that has helped the learning process.
Is this bad? Am I not giving technology enough slack?
Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate a good PowerPoint presentation, but most of the time I feel as if I'm just copying down the notes instead of actually paying attention to the lesson. I've heard of excellent technologies that actually record lectures as you take notes, but I've never actually seen one distributed in the classroom.
I want to love technology in the pedagogical world, but I truly cannot think of one form of technology that I've loved other than film. I cannot think of many technologies that I would want to bring into my classroom. Am I too old school? What do you think? Can you think of some of your favorite technologies that you would use in your future classrooms?

Unit Plan Canvas

Happy Sunday, everyone!
This week I made a lesson plan on a PLAYground Canvas regarding to my post from two weeks ago on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Without being repetitive, I just want to stress the importance of reading and fully understanding Hamlet, or any Shakespearean play for that matter. My canvas is an introduction to Hamlet's soliloquies. During my lesson, we will learn what a soliloquy is, what it does, and what Hamlet's soliloquies reveal about himself to the audience. The hardest part for me was actually making the canvas! I wasn't sure where to put what item and how big to make it. I wanted it to have some sort of flow, so I made the video (which is a great commentary video) quite large so hopefully people will understand that they should watch the video first. I also provided supplementary videos/links below to video, so again, hopefully people will understand.