Picturesque with a touch of "STYLE"

When a teacher is stuck with finding a way to introduce material to a class, it is an overwhelming decision by many teachers to scour the web, or use the intuitive minds that have been hard at work, for a PowerPoint presentation. This adds security and puts a teacher at ease because this is a simple system that has worked before and gives the teacher a sense of mastery because they can work the ends and outs of Microsoft PowerPoint. A useful tool, but at times it is a little outdated. The turn of the century called for new means of introducing materials and with all of the bright ideas, PowerPoint has easily been replaced by other means of technology. Allowing students to see things clearly through artful presentations can make for a nice lesson. My journey has started with Microsoft PowerPoint and slowly transitioned to Prezi. Prezi was introduced to me by a colleague who used it for her undergraduate class. That coupled with the mention of Prezi at a middle school conference found me exploring with it. I began to become more fluent in my uses of it while abandoning PowerPoint.  One of my first Prezi's featured a story we read called the Amigo Brothers. It really caught their attention and it gave them insight about the characters before reading, during and after reading. Podcasting is still an experiment in its trial stages, but it makes for a great way to feature episodes. Students have free range in how they want to put their spin to it. All three types of productions can help students see things that may not be visible if they jumped straight into a book.