Prezi Reflection and Review The entire process of creating and presenting the Prezi was a huge collaborative learning experience for me. Time management was one of the greatest challenges we faced throughout the creation process. As a group, we had to find non-clashing time slots in our schedules in order to meet and design a layout for our project. After brainstorming and designating four major areas of interest for each team member through texts and emails, we made an appointment at the CommLab. One of the English professors helped us with learning the Prezi interface and facilitated the designing of the structure for our Prezi.
The toughest challenge our group faced was to maintain coherence throughout our project. This was intrinsically difficult because our group focused on the diversity of reality and thus we went into very unique branches of thought such as Fundamental Science, Politics, Art, etc. Later on, Professor Harkey gave us valuable feedback as to how to orient our visual structure in order to achieve maximum engagement and coherence. Everything started to fall in place when we created a linked Prezi which allowed all four of us to access and edit the group’s Prezi simultaneously and independently at our own convenience.
I would say this is one of Prezi’s greatest advantages over other presentation softwares. It was incredible for me to log onto our Prezi presentation at say 11:30 p. m. and see my teammates adding content. I could literally see the Prezi grow radially building up with more connections between major areas of interest. It was tough not to get sucked into one of my partner’s chain of thought as he or she was dynamically appending the presentation. However, these distractions proved to be beneficial when we began texting each other while observing each other’s contribution.
Creativity manifested itself in the minor changes we made while we were working on the presentation together. Technology seemed to overpower obstacles such as distance and time and it gave us a feeling of control. It created a hyperreality by almost convincing us that we were working in the same room together. Our group was assigned to review group Foxtrot. The major question they tried to answer in their presentation was “what is realness with reference to the real world? ” In terms of their organization, they followed a very simple structure comprised of concentric circles.
This made it easy for the audience to follow along in a sequential manner but I feel they slightly underutilized Prezi’s capabilities. For each subtopic, they were able to present a well justified argument in their view. I felt they could have enriched their presentation in this aspect by justifying their claims through more perspectives. One good example of the multimodal approach can be found in their presentation. They first used a video with text alone showing the dialogue from the movie, The Matrix. Then, they played the actual piece containing that dialogue.
Thus, it was an instance where they mixed oral, visual, and non-verbal modes quite fluently. The unique aspect about their presentation that distinguishes them is the fact that they relied on verbal communication relatively more than any other group in our class. Thus, one is inclined to believe that their presentation is brief when viewing their Prezi independently although that is not the reality. The very act of focusing their presentation orally to create a discussive environment shows a good deal of Rhetorical Awareness. They could have achieved a better sense of balance in this regard by distributing the time each member spoke equally.
Overall, they did well in all these different areas of evaluation. They especially did well when you take into account that their presentation was broken into two pieces due to time constraints and they were one member short during the presentation. I can clearly see that the entire Prezi assignment has helped both of our groups attain some clarity on the different issues that “realness” brings up. It has also given us a better understanding of how different modes can be used to create different responses in the audience with the same content. The Prezi assignment like I said before has truly been a great learning experience.
