Presentation Tools

During class this week we reviewed APA formatting for our paper due in 2 weeks. APA style is a writing style and format for academic documents such as scholarly journals, articles and books. In our class, Exploring your Digital Portfolio, our next paper must be in APA format. Along with the paper, we are required to do a presentation. Professor Calderwood displayed numerous different presentation tools such as, Haiku Deck, Prezi, Google Slides, Power Point and Sway. Each source provides similar tools to create an adequate slide presentation. For my paper I chose to use Power Point. At first, I attempted using Prezi but it seemed too complex for me. Power Point is simple and easily accessible for me to do my presentation. Pixton, Animoto, Adobe Spark and Powtoon are video creation services that produce videos and slide shows. These tools are also helpful when creating a presentation.       

After having so much trouble using Prezi as a presentation tool I decided to read the article, Guide to using Prezi in an academic environment by Ned Potter. As stated, "Prezi is a zooming presentation tool which offers an alternative to PowerPoint." Prezi provides a unique format that allows users to be creative, however, its setup can get confusing at times. Ned Potter provides guidance on the strengths and weaknesses of Prezi. He explains that Prezi is fresh and different compared to other presentation tools. It can be completely non- linear. Potter explains that you can change the path for every presentation depending on your audience and time-slot. I struggled to figure out how to do this when I was playing with the website earlier in the week. Prezi works better than a slide-deck does when you aren’t there to talk over the top of it. You can easily embed a Prezi on any website or blog, or just direct people towards the presentation on Prezi.com itself. On the other hand, Prezis zooming and lurching nature can cause the audience to feel motion-sickness. Prezi isn’t brilliant for accessibility. A transcript is automatically provided, but it’s not structured very helpfully.

Sway is another tool used for presentations. As stated by Stu Robarts in the article, What is Microsoft Sway, Sway is available as a downloadable app for Windows 10, iPhone and iPad, or as part of Office Online. The purpose of Sway is to convey concepts quickly and clearly. Unlike PowerPoint, it is primarily for presenting ideas onscreen rather than to an audience. Sway is based around a storyline and users add a series of cards that are filled with content. Different cards are available for different content and can be grouped into different sections. As stated, "Sway's built-in design engine chooses how your Sway will look and users have little control over the formatting of individual elements." Overall, Sways presentations are coherent, organized and easily accessible. Personally, I prefer Sway over Prezi.

Another article I read regarding presentation tools was, Use Haiku Deck for Simple Elegant Presentations by George Williams. Haiku Deck is a free app that makes presentations simple and enjoyable. It has radical simplicity, is easy to use and is very flexible. With Haiku deck, you are restricted to two lines of text or a bullet list of no more than 5 items. You can search numerous images or videos or add your own. If you can’t present a Haiku Deck slide deck from your iPad, you may export the presentation in a format compatible with either PowerPoint or Keynote. Although there are many pros of Haiku, one huge con is that If you don’t have an iPad, you can’t create presentations with Haiku Deck. "Haiku Deck is not available for the iPhone, the iPad Touch, any Android devices, MS Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux."

Chapter 4 of Light, Bright and Polite by Josh Ochs provides advice and tools on how college students can impress future employers through social media. The first tip is to be  authentic and professional online. The real question is, what exactly does authentic and professional mean? It is necessary to be yourself but think about what you want the open world to see. Josh Ochs says its best to keep facebook on private but "strategically choose a few posts and photos to set as public."You must choose your words wisely and show your thoughts about the future through other social media. Using Twitter to share relevant content and ideas regarding your field will display your passion for your career. Always delete old posts that don't benefit you or represent who you are today. Some activities that employers like to discover on social media are voluntary work, extra curricular activities, jobs, interviews and hobbies that ultimately, make you a more well rounded individual. You should be a leader not a follower, use youtube to share your skills and stay involved. Good things come to those who think smart and work hard!