Educational Media Hub: All you need to know to get started with Prezi

Prezi suggests to "say goodbye to boring slides and set your best ideas free!"

With traditional slides, your audience looses the big picture of your presentation. Prezi changes all that by giving you the ability to create zooming presentations, zooming out to see the big picture of how your ideas are related, and zooming into the details.

So then, what do you need to know to get started with Prezi? Well, let me share my learning path with you - that is just 5 steps long so far.

Step 1 - Prezi guidance and support

The introductory video on the Prezi homepage will offer you a brief insight into the main aims and features, whilst the Learn & Support page of the website will provide you with some short video tutorials (there were 5 of those when I visited the page last time) followed by a number of step-by-step illustrated instructions on getting to know Prezi, create with Prezi and using Prezi. You can also register for Live Online Training Webinars on the topic most relevant to your needs, choosing form the list of dates which suits you best of all. To add to the luxury, there is also Zoom into Prezi - the Prezy Company Blog. Very supportive indeed!

All the pages listed above can be viewed by unregistered public as well as by subscribers, but to try and make your own presentation you will have to create a free account, which can be then updated to one of the commercial accounts by those who wish to unlock more features.

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Step 2 - You Tube official Prezi tutorials

You Tube Presi channel features easy-to-follow tutorials to help guide you through the process of making a prezi. The videos are 1 to 5 minutes long, so that took me just over half an hour to watch all 21 pieces in one go. I found each one to be quite useful, so hope that they will upload more of those.

Meanwhile, you can discover an endless list of various video tips and guides added to You Tube by a growing community of Prezi fans, like someone hosting Prezi Tutorials channel.

I believe that everyone knows that You Tube is open to anyone and no registration is necessary, unless you want to subscribe to your favorite channels or use other features available to account holders.

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Step 3 - Grovo training

Should you seek any more training, go for Create a Prezi Presentation by Grovo. To access the course, you'll have to sign up for a free Grovo account or log in if you've already got one.

The course comprises 25 short (up to 3 minutes) videos followed by mini-quizzes (2 questions each) and the final quiz leading to certification. A free account enables its holder to go through 10 video topics only, which is quite handy anyway, even though you will not achieve a certificate. That is a privilege reserved for commercial account holders.

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Grovo - Create a Prezi Presentation training

Step 4 - best Prezi examples

No tutorial would make you feel all the beauty and value of Prezi before you actually see some of the products. A number of those actually give you even more guidance on how, why and where to create and use your own prezis.

I personally adore prezis about Prezi uploaded by Bas Landsbergen, the online training host at Prezi, and Drew Banks, the head of international at Prezi. Their profile pages and prezis are public, which means that anyone can watch those even without signing up or logging in to the Prezi website.

You do not have to rely on my choices, Instead, you can carry on exploring the Prezi website to discover more outstanding examples and create your very own list of top "prezinters" (just could not resist twisting that "presenters" word!)

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Step 5 - expert bloggers

If all that is still not enough for you to get motivated and confident to put your hands on Presi, then go for advise and feedback generously shared by bloggers from a variety of backgrounds (Prezi is loved everywhere!).

I happened to come across a number of those and listed a few blog posts, which I sincerely believe being worth visiting:

Your essential ‘how-to’ guide to using Prezi in an academic environment posted on LSE (The London School of Economics and Political Science) blog
How to design a brilliant animated presentation using Prezi: it's online and free to use featured
on PC Advisor
How to use Presi posted by Wiki How
Prezi for dummies cheat sheet by Dummies, posted alongside a list of other recommended posts.

I bet there is no end to this list!

Start your very own prezintation!

So now you are more than equipped to try and produce your own Prezi presentation (I really fancy calling it a "prezintation" - not to claim a new addition to the Oxford dictionary, but just for the fun of it)!

What would it be? And do you have any more cool tips on learning about and using Prezi? Hope you would not mind sharing those in the comments below. Meanwhile, I am all excited and busy with my second prezi. What do you think about the first one above? ;)

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