Killing three birds with one Prezi

After an absence of a whopping six months I am attempting to return to this blog! I'm not sure if anyone else will ever see it, but it will at least get me to reflect on some of my development activities in a focused way. With the introduction of the CPD hour, my desire to recommence the 23 things programme and being asked to do an introduction to digitisation for the graduate trainees, I thought I would kill all those birds with one stone by trying out Prezi!

For my first experience of using Prezi I certainly found it time consuming, and it did take me quite a while to get used to the different way of using it. I'm still not sure how some of the things I've seen are achieved and this probably means I need to spend more time, look at the help guides or talk to other people. I am noticing that my learning style can be to be impatient and insular! On the upside I'm fairly pleased with what I produced. I love the fact that Prezi already has its own bank of images to select from. I had already started thinking a bit more out of the box in terms of what images to use for presentations following week 3 but this presentation cemented that. Still not totally sure whether I needed to use any acknowledgements with the Prezzi images I used though?

What I especially liked about using Prezi is that it got me out of my linear logical mindset and into a more visual creative space. Last year when devising a PowerPoint on digitisation I tried to get all the slides to summarise the main points in words, which actually made the presentation a bit dull. Whereas this time I used many more images and minimal wording on the screen just as prompts and fleshed everything out verbally in the presentation. I really quite like the look and feel of the presentation which was achieved with minimal expertise just using Prezi's own image bank and a template. I tried to use a template organogram type thing they had but basically had to deconstruct it to get it to fit my purpose, so some of it was quite fiddly. I would benefit from enhancing my knowledge on how to manipulate images in other programmes, as I had screen shots I wanted to use but couldn't work out how to upload them as images without the whole word doc appearing.

I have tried to refresh my memory on inserting images from creative commons - to no avail as the urls aren't working. So you will have to imagine a picture of a bird at the top and I will have to investigate further!

The hare and the snail

Okay, so I have only just worked out that I can save my post and publish it later, doh, which will save me feeling like I have to have enough time get it right before I publish and can more easily add stuff as I go along.

I have been one of those people who has refrained from using images for fear of breaching copyright - feeling I would have no defense given that my job involves a degree of copyright knowledge. So, it was great for me to see more about how to use images for free and I love the idea that people are sharing all this stuff. I feel a bit embarassed to say that I had heard of creative commons but never made use of it. I have been really impressed by seeing how images can be used to liven up presentations, specifically in Emily's Law for the Terrified session and feel a bit sheepish about using so much text in our Digitisation presentation earlier in the year. Though a quick flickr search made me think we'd have to be really imaginative to find ways of illustrating digitisation... but I guess that is the point, to get into a more creative headspace about what could be a dry issue.

So I had a go at finding more interesting images, as it just seemed easier to begin with. My search for monsters made out of ceramics and wool didn't bring up much so I searched for a related group and found quite an interesting one containing sculptures of monster/fantasy creatures by artists. However, the images were are 'all rights reserved'. Found this one under creative commons though. This 'monster inside' somehow reminds me of how my little shrunken brain sometimes feels when I'm attempting these 23 things!

image courtesy of gydnew

I found it rather tricky inserting these images. Though I tried several images I was not able to insert a link either long or short to the image using the icon in blogger. I had to get help and copy and paste the html, which seemed to work, but wasn't the intuitive route I expected to be able to use.

I think the issue of intellectual copyright is actually really interesting and have often wondered how far you can actually copyright an idea... given that it's possible for others to have the same idea independently. Who owns ideas any way and what about collective consciousness? However, when it comes to pictures that someone has taken time and effort to create I think it's right that they should have some ownership, so I think it's great now that people are able to share stuff and have some say about how it's used if they want to. 

I am finding it a bit of a challenge to keep up with several new things each week even working at getting one week's things done in two weeks, so was relieved that this week was relatively light on things. No chance of me getting caught up in the catch up week though. I will just smooch along as all you hares leave me in a cloud of dust... ah I have remembered the parable incorrectly, it's the hare and the tortoise not the hare and the snail. Oh well.

Courtesy of tamburix