Jason Sellers is a high school teacher at Phoenix Academy High School East Palo Alto and an active member of the Digital Team of the Bay Area Writing Project, a collaborative program of the University of California at Berkeley and Bay Area schools for the improvement of writing and learning in classrooms in K12 schools and Universities. He also writes Crooked Letter (a blog on education and technology) and has a twitter channel @jesellers. After having been interviewed by Gabor Valyi, Prezi's Social Researcher, he posted to his blog about how he uses prezi in the classroom. We are happy to repost the article on Prezi U.

I had the opportunity to meet with Gabor Valyi from Prezi today. He observed my sophomore language arts class as we used Prezi to learn about ethos, pathos, and logos. Afterwards, Gabor and I met to debrief the lesson and discuss ways that Prezi can optimize their UI for educators.

I was eager to talk to Gabor. Last year, my students used Prezi to share research on the uprising in Libya, and they enjoyed the experience of designing and presenting Prezi’s. I learned something when my students made extensive use of the colors, themes, and shapes features that Prezi offers, which I’d overlooked. They also had a great time watching their colorful little people avatars bounce around the screen as they collaborated on a Prezi together.

Although it’s obvious Prezi is a more engaging alternative to Powerpoint for delivering content in the classroom, I had to confess to Gabor that as a teacher, I don’t use Prezi on a daily basis because I’ve found that it takes longer to create a Prezi than it does to create Powerpoint presentation; however, I do use Prezi for presenting key concepts and facilitating presentations at workshops or in other situations when I have more time to prepare. For teachers, who need to create presentations on a daily basis, speed and ease-of-use are essential in content-creation software. Gabor and I discussed ways that Prezi can speed up that process, and I’ve included my suggestions below.

Things I love about using Prezi as a teacher:

1. Engagement. My students are mesmerized by Prezi. My favorite strategy is to break down text into short phrases or even individual words, so that the text is always in motion as I’m speaking. I also love the feature that allows me to flip some text boxes upside down, so that the entire screen rotates. This might make adults nauseous, but high-schoolers love it.

2. Ability to return to previously covered material and preview what’s next. I organize my text so that one text field flows into the next, so info remains on the screen longer for students who need more time to process it.3. Text embedded into images. When I use Powerpoint, it feels text heavy, with images inserted where I can squeeze them in. My slides often feel cramped. There simply isn’t enough room for both information and images on the same slide, however, in Prezi  text can be embedded into images, which allows me to zoom in on an image to uncover text. This is how images and text SHOULD work together.4. Simplicity in design. Powerpoint’s UI is convoluted. Prezi’s is simple. Nuff said.Some ways that Prezi can be improved:1. I’d like the ability to drag graphics directly from a web page into Prezi. Right now, I have to save an image to the desktop and then import it, which is annoying.2. Font sizing issues. I’d like to be able to select various text fields and calibrate them so that the font sizes match.

3. Selecting multiple text boxes and graphics at the same time to move them together. When I need to add a slide to Powerpoint, it’s easy to insert without messing with the overall structure of the presentation. In Prezi, however, I have to move several things around to insert a new text field or graphic.

4. Chat feature for collaborating on a Prezi. One of my favorite features of Prezi is the colorful little people avatars that pop up during collaborative work. It would be awesome if there was a way to chat with each other using text bubbles above each head.