Powerpoint Vs Prezi

So... PowerPoint or Prezi. This question of superiority is not unlike the arguments about Windows Vs Mac, or Starbucks Vs Costa, Tesco Vs Asda, United Vs City, or my opinion Vs your wrong one. Some people prefer Prezi, others prefer PowerPoint. I opened by getting that roundup out of the way because this post isn't about which one is better. After seeing a presentation deliver using each one its quite clear that they're designed for different audiences: Prezi for the flashy eye-catching here's-my-idea person, and PowerPoint for the workhorse of the here's-a-ton-of-information person.

To start with, lets get links to the software out of the way. Prezi can be found Here and PowerPoint can be found Here (This is the online version of PowerPoint, and installable version is available by purchasing the MSOffice suite).

Unlike previous blog posts, I quite like both of these pieces of software and will use both of them interchangeably; the decision will be based upon what I am presenting - whether I am being a here's-my-idea person or a here's-a-ton-of-information person*. Each has their owns pros and cons, and I feel that this is the best way to compare these two softwares.
                                                         *I would like to point out that I, personally, am not a serial death-by-PowerPoint-er but occasionally need to throw a lot of information onto walls.

PowerPoint

Pros

• Easy to use (after basic learning)
• Unlimited number of slides
• Comes with many templates
• Varying from these templates is simple
• Creating a template is simple
• Available in most institutions with or without internet
• All required software is in-built
• Reliable

Cons

• Predictable presentations
• limited embedding of digital media (must use links)

Prezi

Pros

• Lots of great looking templates
• Simple to fill-in a template
• Seamless links with digital media
• Available anywhere with internet access
• First use engages a tutorial

Cons

• Templates are complicated to modify (such as adding another slide)
• Extremely time-consuming and complex to create an original presentation
• Requires Flash player

From this list it becomes quite obvious that these two pieces of software contrast each others pros and cons. This further reinforces my point that using each piece of software depends on what you plan to use it for.

As an example to aid this comparison I created a similar presentation on both softwares. I say similar because the difference in their designs and layouts would have made it somewhat pointless to attempt to recreate one within the other. For each version I used a template that was supplied, and made some modifications such as adding new slides and altering the design slightly.



Pasting this Prezi into this blog was extremely simple. Once the Prezi was completed it offered up the embed code on the final page, alongside the options to download it and/or share it through e-mails, social media sites etc.


It took a rather large amount of googling to find out how to embed the PowerPoint version of the presentation into my blog, perhaps a bit more that the average user would bother going through (and I also had to upload my presentation to the online version of PowerPoint), but now that I know how to do it it'll take a few seconds next time.

I've copied the explanation into this blog for the reference of anyone who may be looking to do the same.

When you want to share a presentation or a picture slide show with your friends, family, or colleagues, you can embed it in a web page or blog.

1. After you create your presentation in PowerPoint Online, on the File tab, click Share, and then click Embed.
   
2. To create the HTML code to embed your file in the web page, click Generate .
3. In the Embed box, under Dimensions, select the correct dimensions for the blog or web page.
   
4. Under Embed Code, right-click the code, click Copy, and then click Close.
   NOTE    The HTML embed code you copied is an iframe tag supported in many web authoring environments and blog services.
5. Go to your web page or blog editor, write your post, and then switch to HTML editing.
   TIP    Make sure the embed code you copied is still the most recent item in your clipboard.
6. Press Ctrl + V.
   
   *Taken from support.office.com

For the Prezi version, the modification I made were to add the College of Art logo and add a new slide (in this case it was adding another yellow circle and moving the camera to zoom into it). I was honestly quite surprised at how long this took to do: It took about 20 minutes to add all of the information to the presentation, and then 35 minutes to create the new slide.

For the powerboat version I made the same addition of the College of Art logo to the front page and created the image placeholder in slide 3 from scratch. This whole presentation, including all of the modifications too about 20 minutes.

I would consider myself moderately competent at using both pieces of software so the time taken to create each one is what I would consider to be average for most users. With the PowerPoint taking 20 minutes and the Prezi taking nearly an hour, its not hard to see why most teachers still prefer to use powerpoint - I wouldn't want to be nearly trebling the time I take to create the presentation for every lecture just for the sake of flashy transitions. However, if I were doing a one-off presentation that I wanted to impress people with, I think I would opt to spend the extra time making a Prezi presentation.

So in conclusion - they both make presentations, but not all presentations are the same, and so it's a case of choosing the right tool for the job at hand.

Wordle (and other word cloud generators)

Word clouds are images created from chunks of text that make the more prominent words larger and then create the image based around them.

Rather than attempt to explain what the software does, here's an example of a word cloud created by Wordle: (the text for this word-cloud was taken from my previous Blog entry on Hot Potatoes).

*On a note related to the last post, this word-cloud took about 3 minutes to load as the website kept insisting that I upgrade to the latest version of java, but i'm not gonna start another rant on that.

So from the information I've gathered, the idea of word clouds is to give a representation of the words used in the text and reflect how often the words are used. One might be inclined to think that this would give a good overview of the context of the text, but in this example we see that this is not true. The blog text is a somewhat scathing review of the software, but the word-cloud brings words such as useful, technology, software, quizzes, appropriate, challenge, and better. This list of words, taken completely out of context, do not reflect the content of the text, but merely the words within.

But this isn't going to be another scathing review of a piece of software written in Java, for this one could actually prove useful to me. From the standpoint of an academic, it serves a purpose as a writing tool. Once a report/essay/paper has been written it can be run through a word-cloud generator to see if the same word has been used too many times without need, perhaps leading the writer to reach for a thesaurus more often. Lets see what comes up when I run my MA dissertation through Wordle.

It would appear that I use the words sound and sounds very often and the words piece and scene a large amount of times too (the words figure appears a lot, but since it's an academically referenced document we'll accept that this word will appear a lot anyway). The document describes the making of a work of sonic art, so it's natural that the words sound, piece and scene would appear a lot. But had I used this software when I wrote the paper I may have reworded a few sections where I had overused the word sound.

Another use I would find for this kind of software is based on the fact that the output is pretty. In a previous life I had studied web-design at postgraduate level, so clean but interesting designs are something that appeal to me. I would certainly take an image like this to use as the cover for a handout, or maybe to open a presentation on a heavily discussable topic.

In a teaching sense I can only ponder on ways to force this software into lessons; I can not propose a situation where a word-cloud-generator might be considered invaluable to the lesson, but it would certainly be interesting in some situations. Such a situation might be in the early stages of a class group project where I might have the students write a paragraph describing their thoughts on a subject, and then compiling all of the replies into a word cloud in an effort to draw out the most popular aspects that each students had considered. But I must admit that this feels like a way to force the software into the lesson and doesn't feel like something that would tremendously benefit the learning.

Wordle is not the only word-cloud-generator available for free online; a quick google search led me to an article on Educemic.com where 10 word-cloud-generators are listed. These all perform the same function, but to varying degrees of artistry and efficiency.

To round this post off, here is a final Wordle cloud created using the content of this post:

P.S. Stop making everything using Java.

P.P.S. Dear OSX autocorrect - in this instance wordle is actually a word.

Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes(Available on Windows and OSX HERE) is a piece of software for creating a number of different types of quizzes. The types on offer range from crosswords to fill-in-the-blank questions and general quizzes. It gives options for multiple choice answers and hints, with slots to add additional info on questions.

It's quite a well thought out bit of software and makes making quizzes and crosswords very easy. It also allows you to export the finished product as an html file, so you can open it anywhere... in theory.

Here is where Hot Potatoes starts to fall short: it's made in Java. Anyone who's spent longer than 10 minutes on a computer will know how much of a pain the existence of Java is. A friend of mine who studied computer engineering once cracked a joke about how "the computers in this film are so unrealistic; he's been using it for over 30 seconds and it hasn't asked him to update his Java software". This gripe with Java was punctuated during the lesson where I was introduced to it, where the entire class got caught in the deadlock of "you must update Java" Vs "You don't have the user permissions to update Java". This problem is exacerbated by the fact that browsers such as Chrome and Firefox are dropping support for Java (and lets not mention tablets).

There are alternatives to Hot Potatoes available, such as LearnClick and QuizPress, and these have various pros and cons when compared to Hot Potatoes in regards to price, usability and functionality.

But lets assume that we get Hot Potatoes working just fine and we have no issues with Java, how useful is it in the delivery of a Music Technology course?

I feel the answer to this question lies in how useful a quiz of these types might be to the field. I certainly wouldn't feel like asking students to complete a crossword was appropriate to ask of undergraduate students, and neither would I feel comfortable in asking them to perform another similar type of quiz. Thinking back to my days as an undergraduate I think I would have been quite insulted if my lecturer had asked me to open a browser and try and complete a quiz (unless of course it was the Philips Golden Ear Challenge).

Perhaps I am looking at it wrong. I understand that quizzes such as these can be useful in assessing whether students have retained the information you have given them, I just fail to see a way of applying it within Music Technology that would not be better served by another assessment method.

There was, during my class, the suggestion that quizzes could be useful in assessing the level of students when they begin a course/module and get an overall idea of their knowledge base. This is a fair comment, although personal experience tells me that having a class discussion where everybody talks about their background and we, as a group, go through some topics that students may or may not have knowledge on tends to serve the purpose in a better way. the discussion adds a bonding element to the group as they get to know each other and the students also get to learn snippets of information from the discussions. The method of using quizzes would (i feel) be a far more individual task and wouldn't have the added bonding-bonus that the discussion provides. This is something I feel is very important for Music Technology students as, in this university at least, there are a lot of group and class based projects.

Quizzes do have a place within Music Technology, such as with the Golden Ear Challenge, with AB-tests, and with surveys for research papers, but all of these are serviced in a far superior way by other software.

So, to conclude, Hot Potatoes does what it does, but if thats what you need to then there is better and more up-to-date software available. I also cannot think of a way in which using quizzes would be the most appropriate assessment method at an undergraduate level.

Introduction to this blog

The idea behind this blog is to explore the uses of ICT software in regards to teaching Music Technology. I'll be covering quite a few pieces of software that are used within teaching in general and will evaluate their viability and practicality for use in teaching in my particular field.

This is probably a good time to give a little background info on myself. I studied a BSc(hons) in Music Technology and then went on to study an MA in Creative Sound Design. After that I moved on to becoming Artist in Residence for Music Technology at UWTSD. During that time I started lecturing in the department and continue to do so. I'm currently studying a PGCE/PCET alongside lecturing which has driven me to produce this blog. Music-wise I play in a number of punk and rock bands, and I also produce some experimental/avant-garde tracks. I'm currently on a bit of a minimalism and atmospheric trip, so i'm putting out stuff like this:

So this academic year i've been charged with lecturing in 4 modules: The Studio Engineer, Creative Practice 1, Creative Practice 3, and Spatial Audio. The reason I mention these is that the practicality of the ICT tools i'm reviewing will be mostly in relation to delivering these modules. I have previously delivered modules called Sound Lab (essentially advanced-studio-engineer) and Contextual Studies, which was very much presentations and class discussions.

I'm going to try and keep each bit of software to a separate blog post, but at times I may see fit to combine pieces of software into a single post (such as a Moodle/Blackboard post).