Week 4: Materials, HTML and Prezi

Useful Design Elements from Chapter 3
As I build my training modules, I'll be incorporating peer review, case studies, discussions and brief presentations. Our agency intranet will serve as the hub and will include embedded YouTube videos and other required reading. I will use our ProBoards discussion forum for the discussions, peer review and case studies. We will probably use our Polycom videoconferencing system for the "in-person" sessions and possibly AnyMeeting, only if it makes sense. I hope that I'll be creative enough to design a useful project that requires collaboration so I can use Google Docs. It's such a great tool that I try to find reasons to introduce people to its power and effectiveness for document collaboration.

HTML
Although I am quite familiar with HTML (It's part of my job and I used to have a web design small business), I use Dreamweaver and it doesn't require extensive knowledge of HTML. I'll use Dreamweaver to post the syllabus and resources on our intranet.

Prezi
I am so glad to see, from my classmates' posts (1 and 2), that I am not the only one who gets slightly dizzy watching Prezi presentations. They can definitely spice up a linear presentation but I don't think linear is bad and too much spice ruins a dish. Screens of bullet points should be avoided; showing instead of telling should be encouraged. Spinning and zooming isn't the answer...in my humble opinion :)

Edited to Add: Lisa posted this comment, "Prezi doesn’t have to be used with lots of turning and zooming. You can use it to make a horizontal or vertical chart with different items, or anything else that’s a simple presentation."

I like this idea. In particular, I think it would make sense to review a diagram of some sort where you could start from a wide angle to see the big picture and then drill down to each section and review the details. I haven't searched the internet enough to see someone do this, but I'm sure they have. At some point, I'll take some time to play with it and see how this particular application would work.