Prezi

If you have to make a presentation and you are tired of Powerpoint there is a different way to do one and it has some real advantages for certain types of presentations. You can find the program at http://prezi.com.

Powerpoint has been around for a long time and some people are tired of the same templates and the fact that it is linear. If you are working with content that is best presented in a linear way you might want to use Powerpoint, but Prezi encourages you to be creative and show your information in a new way.



To begin you need to sign up for a Prezi account. You can sign up for free to try it out and upgrade later if you need more space or features.

Next choose a username and password. The account you create is nice because it allows you to work on them and show them from any computer. You can make them private or public. You have control over how they are used. So, create a username and password that you will remember (not the same one you use for your bank account and other important places you log into) and write it down on a piece of paper or booklet and keep it somewhere you can find it.

After you have signed in the best thing to do is to take a look at some of the Prezis that other people have created and made public. That way you can see how they work and start to imagine the way you might use Prezi. There are lots of great examples to look at to get ideas.

You start by choosing a template. There are many templates to choose from Then you can import pictures, video and of course use text. You can even import already finished Powerpoint Presentations. First put all of the content you want to use onto the page. It does not matter exactly where each thing is placed because in the end you will create a path to show what order you want to show it in.

Once everything is in place you choose to create a path and a line shows up with each item (text, picture, video) numbered.  Then you can play it to see what it looks like. You can make it go automatically or have it move from each number to the other with clicks.

See the one that I created while writing this blog post.
http://bit.ly/YDRVxR

FREE Ways to Word Process, Collaborate, etc...

TWO STORIES 

At the end of September my son got married. He lives in Ohio and we are in Texas. We were helping him plan and design the ceremony. Instead of sending files back and forth or using lots of email David set up a Google Doc and invited us to share it. We could all work on it at different times or even at the same time in order to collaborate!  Amazing!

Recently I updated my MacBook to Lion, but to my unhappy surprise I found out that it does not support Microsoft Office. It has something to do with programs that used the Intel chip... I can't explain it... I'm not a Geek, but anyway there I was without some expensive software that I used all of the time. (side note: now when I receive an excel or word document I have to open up the Open Office first and then use File-Open to find the file and open it up.





You wonder what these two stories might have to do with each other?  Well, it is just that there are so many ways to get around having to use expensive software to do word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations now!

In this post I want to share with you some of what  I have done to fill in the gap from the software that no longer works on my system.

ONE

I downloaded a free program called Open Office. It is very similar to Microsoft Office, but it is Open Source which means that anyone can work on the code of it and make it better and it is FREE! I have been using it regularly for word processing. I have not used spreadsheets or presentations or anything else yet, but I think it will be fine. When I save something in Open Office I have to remember to change the format before saving because it has its own format (.odt) which other programs cannot open. When I save under "save as" I choose .doc and so far it seems to save everything just fine. 

TWO

I have been using Google Docs and Spreadsheets. The biggest benefit of these programs is that they can be shared online with others. You can give them rights just to look at the document or to edit it. You can make it public, so that everyone can see it or make it private so that you are the only one who has access to it. Google has just updated to Google Drives which I have not worked with much yet. It looks to me like you can download all of your Google Docs into a free software on your laptop. Then when you are not online you will still have access to your Docs and you can work on them. Then when you are online the newest copy syncs so that you have the same copy in both places. 

One drawback of using Google Docs is that you will be relying on Google to keep all of your stuff. It is all saved on one of their servers. If this is a problem for you avoid Google Docs. You will not have total control of everything. 

However, it is probably safer, in terms of not losing your documents because their servers are duplicated and regularly backed up. You can ALWAYS get to your stuff. It will be accessible even if you are in a flood or a fire and loose everything. You can access it from anywhere on any computer. 








  THREE

For some presentations I have started using Prezi. It is a whole new way of presenting ideas based more on networking thoughts and graphics together rather than presenting them in a linear way. The best way to see what it does is to go to their website and see some of their samples. 

So, we are getting to the point where we do not need expensive software to do the basic things that we want to do!