[image by Melle Oh]
In an aside while discussing Serena Epstein’s brilliance (I can’t help but agree, someone should hire her pronto), The Rev says:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those fickle zombies that fawns over every slick tool that comes around. On the contrary, I’m a rather loyal WordPress zombie. Nonetheless, their presentation with Prezi is so intelligently imagined and executed that I came away re-thinking that tool. The presentation became the canvas upon which they painted their way through the topic of visual interaction, and in this example the medium was the message in every sense of that concept. Hats off to Serena and Brian for both imagining and executing this fact so brilliantly. Nothing like having faculty raving about these new fangled web 2.0 tools after the students rock their world! Check out their presentation blog, and be sure to feast your eyes on the Prezi here …
A similar sentiment came up in conversation with another colleague a few weeks ago, and I’m just not seeing it. Prezi looked pretty interesting when it first came out– I was eager for a Beta account– but it only took a half-dozen steps into my first viewing of a Prezi presentation to lose interest. In effect, Prezi is like a stockpile of cool Powerpoint transitions with the slides, and like their despised Powerpoint brethren, these become irritating rather quickly. I just don’t see the innovation that others talk about.
I’m a strong proponent of a presentation style– using Powerpoint or otherwise– that use few or no words. Prezi does help with this. And in very minor sense in this particular case, with this particular topic, Jim is right that Prezi illustrates the idea of the medium being part of the message. But it does so in both a positive and negative way. In this case– as in every Prezi presentation– it doesn’t take long for the medium to get in the way. I’m reminded of Larry Lessig’s presentation style and how amazing and effective it was the first few times until it became something that only Larry could pull off without seeming cheesy, derivative and repetitive.
When Alan Levine showed Blabberize in a Northern Voice session a few years ago, it got a great laugh. It was funny and well-placed. But more than about 30 seconds of it– no matter how brilliant the words coming out of its mouth– and I’m suddenly a long way from re-thinking the power of the talking llama.
I want to be clear: the content of the presentation is very interesting. In the end, quality will out. I wouldn’t (won’t!) hesitate to recommend the presentation to others. It’s just unfortunate that after the umpteenth Prezi "swirl and grow"– guess what’s going to happen, swirl around and grow/focus? Yep. What’s next? The same!– the Prezintation starts to distract from the presentation.
An anecdote worth considering:
“After a dinner at the house of Emile Borel, Paul Valery asked [Einstein]: when an idea comes to you, how do you make arrangements to remember it? A notebook, a scrap of paper…
Einstein responded: Oh! An idea, it is so rare!”
–found in Cultural Amnesia (Clive James)
It goes a long way toward explaining my extended break(s) from blogging.
(besides disabling comments altogether)
D’Arcy points to the WP-SpamFree plugin, which looks pretty good. If it works for D’Arcy’s blog, it should work for just about anyone.
But it made me wonder anew about the complexity of spam filtering and why nothing seems to use what seems the simplest solution: a hidden div in the form with a small text field. If the form is submitted with anything in that field, reject it. By their nature, spambots fill in as many fields as they can. They’d see the field, humans would not. And even lower browser requirements than Javascript. That’d be the end of spam, right?
Everyone who works in (or slaves for, or lives and breathes) education should be involved in the open education discussion. What better place for that can there be than the 2009 Open Education Conference in Vancouver? Whether you are just open-ed-curious or a committed open-ed-operative– or, like myself, somewhere in between– OpenEd 2009 has something for you. If you don’t believe me, take Brian Lamb’s 30-second quiz.
OpenEd 2009
August 12-14 – Vancouver, B.C.
Call for Papers open until May 1
These aren’t your grandma’s Keynote Speakers
Open Education is at a critical juncture. It only takes a brief tour of popular education blogs or a few minutes in the hallway at any education conference to realize this. A global economic conundrum and a natural settling into inertial coasting on the part of many of the most significant pioneers have combined to leave many wondering "what now?"
The fact is, I don’t care that much about capital-O Open, Capital-E Education. I care about openness and how we can foster openness as a posture by educators, students and institutions alike. The semi-formal Open Education Resources movement is a good thing. Content is grist for the mill. It is itself the infrastructure. But small-caps open education is about much more than that… it’s about making an open stance– sharing and receiving– the default rather than the exception.
Until we figure out how to create an approach toward open education with enough diversity and richness to make it an everyday phenomenon, the promise we recognize will remain just that. OpenEd 2009 will be a place to learn, to further the investigation, and make critical connections from around the world. We’re out of solitary confinement… but isn’t it time to stop pacing around behind the same bars?
[full disclosure: I am a humble member of the conference organizing committee along with Brian Lamb, Scott Leslie and David Wiley. What'd you expect, objectivity?]
