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Prezi

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by Steve Taylor

Prezi is a tool for creating presentations, just as Powerpoint and Keynote are, but with some interesting differences. Since its creation in 2009, it’s been seen more and more in conferences.

Metaphors
One way in which Prezi differs from earlier presentation tools is its metaphor. Both Powerpoint and Keynote use the metaphor of a series of individual slides that can be shown in a predetermined sequence, just as 35mm slides would be shown with a carousel projector.

In Prezi’s metaphor, the creator arranges materials on an infinitely large canvas and— as I think of it— uses a video camera to pan and zoom through those materials. That can be done on the fly or the creator can pre-record a series of pans and zooms. The resulting presentation maintains the spatial relationships among the various materials.

It’s On the Web
Although they can be downloaded, “Prezis” are assembled on the web, through your browser, and can be presented via your browser as well. They can be shared with the general public or with a select group of colleagues (or members of a class.) You can even collaborate with others on the creation of your Prezi, which makes it a great vehicle for group projects.

Good and Bad Uses
I’ve seen great uses of Prezi and uses that make no sense at all— unfortunately, quite a few of the latter. If your presentation materials consist of a series of bullet-point lists, quotations, graphics, etc. that have no particular spatial relationship to each other, then there’s no particular reason to lay them out side by side and pan from one to another. But if there are spatial relationships— such as in a complex chart, diagram or map— then Prezi may be the perfect tool.

Here are a few examples of great uses for Prezi. You can pan and zoom on your own, or click the Play button to step through a pre-recorded tour.

“Classification of Organisms,” created by Robert Kappus, will lead you systematically through a complex chart. The chart is circular, and the zoomed-in labels and graphics are aligned along radii of the circle, but that poses no problem, as the pre-recorded tour can not only pan and zoom, but rotate the view as well.
The “Physical Features of Africa Quiz” Prezi, created by Emily Thompson, will give you a tour through the major mountain ranges of Africa. Maps tend to be difficult things to project in a classroom, because the amount of detail means that labels often are too small to see from a distance. Prezi is a great vehicle for showing detailed maps, because of the extreme levels of zooming it can support.
One of my favorite uses of Prezi is to explore different details of a complex work of art. Here’s one that I created, providing a tour through some of the details of the painting Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch. An instructor can present a series of details from a work like this, without losing the context of each detail.
A number of people have realized that Prezi can be a good tool for creating a concept map— a diagram that shows relationships among various concepts. Here’s an example of a Globalization concept map, created by Dennis Carnduff.

Go to the Prezi website to explore other materials that various people have made public, to get more ideas on how it can be used.

Licensing
Prezi offers three levels of licensing:

  • Public, which is free, provides you with 100 MB of storage, but requires you to make your creations public.
  • Enjoy, which costs $59/year, provides 500 MB storage and allows you to make your creations private.
  • Pro, which costs $159/year, provides 2GB storage.

However, students and teachers— anyone with an “edu” email address— can get the Enjoy level of license for free.

Prezi U
The website also provides a gateway to “Prezi U,” a community of educators who share ideas about using Prezi in their teaching.

 

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Taxonomy of Learning Environments

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by Steve Taylor
There’s been a great deal of talk in higher-education circles over the past year, about the perils and possibilities of online learning. Often that talk has been in the context of MOOCs or Coursera, but there are many variations of online learning and I often find that two people discussing the topic have fairly different things in mind. Here then is a taxonomy that we can use to get a little closer to understanding each other.

Classroom Learning (also called Face-to-Face Learning)
This type of course serves to anchor one end of the spectrum of remoteness in learning environments. It refers to the traditional environment, in which matriculated students and their instructor meet in real space, on a frequent basis— usually two or three times per week. Readings and homework assignments exist on paper.

Enhanced Classroom Learning
As in traditional classroom learning, matriculated students and their instructor meet in real space on a frequent basis, but some of their course materials— and more significantly their course activities— reside on the web. Students may be expected to contribute to online discussions or blogs, collaborate online with classmates on group projects, or take quizzes or exams online.

Blended Learning (or Hybrid) Courses
In this type of environment, matriculated students conduct a majority of their learning online, but meet face-to-face with their class a few times throughout the term of the course. This is essentially a distance-learning approach, with some added checks, giving instructors an opportunity to confirm that students are on track, and possibly to administer an exam in a proctored setting. Blended learning courses are often offered for adult learners in rural areas, who have to drive a long distance to campus.

Distance Learning
In a distance-learning environment, matriculated students take an entire course— or sometimes an entire degree program— online. Many universities offer distance-learning programs for students who would not be able to accommodate the schedule and location of traditional courses. Many public universities, with their commitment to educating the diverse populations of their states, have had distance learning programs for years, and many large, private universities have such programs as well.

Massive Online Open Course (MOOC)
MOOCs started to become prominent in late 2011 or early 2012. They exist entirely online and, unlike the other learning environments mentioned, they do not require learners to be matriculated in any particular institution. They are generally free of charge, but offer no credits. Because there is generally no instructor interaction involved, an individual MOOC may have thousands or even tens of thousands of students.

A number of universities have endorsed and supported their faculty members who wish to design MOOCs. Their motivations at this point seem to be a desire to “push their brand” into a larger population and, to some extent, a desire to provide a public service to that population.

Traditional, residential colleges like Vassar have been providing enhanced classroom learning experiences for many years, but most are just beginning to consider whether it makes sense for them to offer courses with reduced face-to-face time.

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Farewell to Blackboard!

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by Steve Taylor

For almost ten years, Vassar faculty and students have used the Blackboard system for sharing files and communicating within their classes. As we ring in the new year and ring out the old, Blackboard is one of the things we’re leaving behind. Here’s a little background on how we got to where we are.

By the late 1990s, many faculty members were learning HTML and creating websites for their courses, but quite a few colleges and universities had begun using “course management systems” or “learning management systems” to give their faculty an easy way to make course materials and activities available to their students online. There were a number of competing products— Blackboard, WebCT, Angel, “Web Course in a Box,” CourseInfo, First Class, WebBoard, and others.  I was interested in this development, but decided to wait a bit and see how the competitors fared.

By 2001, it was clear that Blackboard would become the dominant product in the marketplace. Since so many dot-coms were dying early deaths, that seemed a good enough reason to choose Blackboard. I approached the Director of CIS (Diane Balestri) and proposed that we adopt Blackboard. She wasn’t convinced about the prospects of this new technology, but suggested that if I could purchase it with my existing budget, we could try it. (Luckily, the initial offering was cheap.)

In the fall of 2001, we had our initial trial— about a dozen instructors used Blackboard for 19 courses. (More than a third of them were Chemistry courses.) Blackboard’s use grew dramatically:

There were a fair number of complaints about how Blackboard functioned, but Blackboard Inc. was very poor at responding to suggestions or even bug fixes. And the cost had grown to more than $40,000 annually. So in 2008, we began exploring alternatives and eventually decided to replace Blackboard with Moodle. Moodle is an open-source program, which means that anyone can customize the program to their liking. At Vassar, we’ve taken advantage of that by adding and removing functions, clarifying wording, creating our own look and feel, etc.

As of fall 2010, no active courses were using Blackboard, but the server was still available for instructors to access old sites. As of December 31, the server has been shut down. (ACS maintains archives of all Blackboard course sites, which can be imported into Moodle at any time in the future.)

Moodle has been enthusiastically welcomed by many, but the transition has not been easy. Once everyone is fully out of the transition stage, though, I think they’ll be quite happy with Moodle. And if there’s anything we don’t like about it, we can probably change it!

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The Impact of Images

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by Matthew Slaats

Images have long been a vital tool in the field of Art History as a way of accessing the visual information provided by artists. From the lantern slide to the digital image, they have provided a way of accessing alternative information, conveying something more or different than text. Yet we are moving beyond the image, pulling and twisting visual material to make it more accessible and provide further information. Negotiating and exploring these new boundaries has provided a wealth of experience that is now being used not only in arts but across the humanities and sciences.

In 2006, Vassar College’s Art Department embarked on an initiative to shift from analog to digital material. Lead by the Visual Resources Library (VRL) and Academic Computing Services (ACS), the college took on the sizable challenge of translating the material and supporting the infrastructure used to display the images. This transition was not simply a move from one media type to another, from slide to JPEG, slide projector to Powerpoint, but a revolution in digital literacy as faculty have moved from being media users to being media producers. The result of 4 years has not only been a large collection of images or a faculty that is more savvy with Powerpoint, but a faculty with an increased desire to pursue new forms of media. This is leading us now to discuss the roles that the VRL and ACS play in supporting these new desires and what structures are needed to create dynamic teaching resources.

Here are a few examples of the  experiences we have gone through on our path to a new digital world.

Image Collections

A primary question when digitizing images is how they will be stored.  At Vassar, our answer has been Luna. Initially chosen because of its usability and presentation functionality, most faculty see it primarily as a repository for material.  In recent upgrades, the system provides interesting possibilities for organizing and sharing content with just about anyone. Artstor has similar functionality. Brought to you by the same people involved with Jstor, this collection provides an ever growing resource for digital images along with presentation ability via the web.

The main issue with both these systems is that they don’t do everything you really want them to do.  When I say everything, I mean storing various media formats (movies, sound, pdfs, etc). While they are making inroads into these areas, both systems have specific audiences they are trying to reach with very specific needs. In an ideal world, we’d have a system that could store anything, connect with the proper data, and provide unique ways of using that information. Presently, we are looking into new possibilities that would create relational collections for a broad range of material.

Powerpoint and Keynote

Yes, the ongoing battle of Keynote and Powerpoint. Much of this would be based on whether your campus is Mac or PC.  At Vassar, we have a mix of both, which keeps us abreast of the constantly shifting changes in the software. My official favorite is Keynote.  This is due to its wealth of functionality and its ability to absorb just about anything. Typical of Apple, Keynote is made for using and adapting media with possibilities for removing backgrounds and doing animation. With Office 2010/11, Powerpoint is definitely catching up, specifically with its ability to broadcast and create animation. I’d also note other online tools like Prezi, Google Docs Presentations, and Adobe Connect.

Quicktime VR/Zoomify

The last two things that I want to mention are Quicktime VR and Zoomify. Over the last three years, Vassar has become a hub of panoramic image production. Primarily in support of architectural research being done by professor Andrew Tallon (Link) and Nicholas Adams, we have created a wealth of images that allow for a much further appreciation of space and context in teaching. Serving these through the web and in presentations, this medium provides for a broadening of the experience, allowing students to tangibly access distant places. Our collection will soon be available via a website.

Extending out of this work, we have begun to photograph spaces using Gigapan technology. These extremely high resolution images allow for the documentation of the minutest detail. When accessed through a web page with Zoomify, you are able to pull out detail that most would never be able to see. Here is an example – Center Portal Tympanum at Vézelay.

Conclusion

In all the transition from analog to digital images has provided a wealth of opportunities for engaging in new ways of understanding and experiencing the world around us. No longer are images the sole medium through which teaching takes place, but a starting point that is leading to video, audio and animation.  Faculty, Librarians and Academic Computing must be partners in leading down the revolution of image consumption to digital production.

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Welcome

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by Steve Taylor

Welcome to Techademia, a site where the Academic Computing Consultants at Vassar write about technology and teaching.

This blog will be about our teaching and your teaching. We envision this site as a place where we hope to do a little teaching, about things that may be too new or obscure to have caught your notice. At the same time, these writings will  focus on teaching at the college level, while highlighting ways in which technology can enhance— or even revolutionize— that teaching.

Every faculty member that I’ve met at Vassar is wholly committed to his or her teaching. Many tell me that they’re really interested in one technology or another that might help their students to understand their course materials better. But they’re also really, really busy and can rarely find the time to take workshops or tinker around with new devices or programs.

We hope that his blog will provide a way for you to fit a little bit of this learning into your busy schedule. We aim to generate new postings each week, on various topics related to teaching with technology. Those topics will range from descriptions of very specific gadgets to discussions of pedagogical approaches. Some will be specific to Vassar, while others will be more generic.

The primary contributors will be the four members of Vassar’s Academic Computing Services (ACS) group. (If you’d like to know more about us, see the authors’ profiles, in the sidebar.) We may have occasional guest contributors as well, and we invite anyone in the Vassar community to comment on what they read.

Looking forward to some interesting discussions,

Steve

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