Prezi in the house ya'll

The first time I saw Prezi (www.prezi.com), the zooming presentation illustrator, I thought of a constellation. Because from far away a star looks like this------------>

When in all actuality up close stars look more like this
<-------------- As such Prezi allows you to zoom infinitely onto the grid of your presentation, and out infinitely as much. It would then seem that a skilled presentation editor could then make images and presentations into optical illusions of factual information and persausive argumentation. I just kept thinking about stars and constellations. And when I think of Astronomy I think of Dr. Gary Brown. (He's on the right) Dr. Brown constantly reminds me to call him Gary but I prefer Dr. Brown for it conjures up childhood memories of eating at kosher delis with my grandparent ordering that delicious cream soda, you know Dr. Brown's cream soda, root beer, cel ray, black cherry, etc....

And there was a Dr. Brown in a little movie called Back to the Future. All I'm saying is, is that there is plenty good reason go by by Dr. if your last name is Brown, but Gary is such a humble guy he likes going by Gary. At any rate, Dr. B is a teacher's teacher. We worked together last year as I was just starting out and he was finishing his PhD, we had many of the same students, and worked together on a several projects that were cross-curricular.

The big unit assessment in Astronomy was originally to create a powerpoint about a constellation. But Dr. Brown, being a clever guy had the idea to have all of his students make videos, and utilize our incredible technology at our school, and extremely flexible staff. (Flexible like Smith flexible (2006), err, my last post about dj hero...oh you didn't watch it? well it's right down there if you want to look)
So like my students I hopped on board the constellation video train. A few other teachers made constellation projects, too. That's just one of the really nice things about working in an environment like that, the camaraderie between faculty was always to enhance the learning of the students. Anyway, here's my video from last year.

My constellation was Delphinus. It's a little over 5 minutes, I don't expect anyone to watch it all the through but do watch some to get an idea of the kind of learning that comes from making educational videos. And no, none of the students made original songs like this one called, "Dolphins are Everywhere" I was just using a novel way to make a video about a minor constellation. I chose the constellation of the Dolphin, not because I am from Miami (which I am) and not because I know Dan Marino...I actually have met Dan Marino a few times, the first time I did I told him he was great in Ace Ventura.... but I chose it because of the game Dolphin Olympics.

So why does any of this matter? Because it takes a lot of time and effort and coordination and instruction to get 125 ~5 minute videos of constellations. I see Prezi as an alternative to this kind of project.

Anyone can be using prezi like a power-user in about 6 minutes if you watch the first two tutorials on their website. They have a ton more tutorials but the first two will get you well on your way. My prezi took about somewhere between 2 and 3 hours to make. In school talk that's like 3 to 4 days. So what? Prezi gets the information across to the audience in an effective and attractive way. Prezi is super easy to learn and super fun to tinker with! So I made a prezi, seen below about Orion, a tribute to Dr. Brown. --somewhere there's a video of him and me dancing with Toni Basil via green screen to the words "Orion" instead of "Oh Mickey". If I can find that I'll upload that too--- So my thoughts were on creating an Orion prezi for my pal, and an equally technophilic teacher, Dr. Gary Brown, while exploring new kinds of media.