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On average, organizations spend roughly 15% of their time in meetings, according to Airgram. Therefore, when it comes to a sales meeting, we must put in extra effort to make a lasting impression on prospects.
We invited Richard Mulholland and Dani Balona from the persuasive communications agency Missing Link to share their masterclass on how to use Prezi in meetings to hack customer expectations. Check out the three steps you need to take to change the way you think about your sales meetings or watch the full webinar here.
According to Rich, “Great service isn’t defined by how well you do your job, it’s defined by how well you do the ‘not my job’ stuff. i.e. the stuff that they didn’t pay you for.” If you go to a 5-star hotel, you’re going to expect 5-star treatment — however, it’s when they provide something unexpected that it becomes memorable.
When the Harry Potter and the Chambers of Secrets movie came out, Rich mentioned to his business partner that he already bought tickets and was so excited to see it. His partner said it wasn’t very good, but still told Rich to go see for himself. After Rich watched it, he called his partner wondering what he was talking about — the movie was amazing. His business partner said he didn’t want to ruin it for him, so he set his expectations low (in other words, he hacked Rich’s expectations).
The bar is already set low for online meetings. All you need to do is appear more professional on camera to hack expectations. Dani and Rich shared a few ways to do so:
Prezi lets you easily hack expectations and present the unexpected by allowing you to bring slides on screen right in front of you. You can do this with a full-screen slide, a transparent full-screen slide, a picture-in-picture reveal, or a side slide. By taking advantage of these slide options, you can change the mundane nature of client meetings.
To make the most of Prezi and incorporate immersive scenes into your presentation, you’ll want to follow two key principles:
Remember: It’s not about storytelling but about story selling. The focus should not be solely on improving how you tell your story during client meetings, but rather on centering your attention on your customer’s story. “Don’t tell them your story. Sell them a new version of their story in which you play a part,” Rich said.
When you’re meeting a customer for the first time, find common ground or “commonplace” as Dani and Rich refer to it.
Dani shared an example from a Harvard negotiation class, where students were paired up and tasked to make a deal. Within that group, 55% came to an agreement.
The next group was assigned the same task, except this time the professor said that before you begin negotiating, share some information about each other and find something in common. Out of that group, 90% of the pairs reached a mutually beneficial agreement, resulting in deals that were 18% better for both parties. Therefore, finding some sort of connection with your clients off the bat will prove beneficial.
According to Rich, the audience’s enjoyment of a presentation can never surpass the presenter’s own enthusiasm for delivering it.
Prezi allows you to surprise and excite your audience by being intentional when you share your content. As Rich shared earlier, while you have slide options, what he particularly appreciates about Prezi is that it allows you to choose specific moments when you bring the content on screen.
There’s no need to screen share or have your content up the entire time. By doing so, your prospect can feel like they’re guiding the conversation, and you can incorporate the “wow” factor by bringing up content they actually want to see.
Like what you see? Contact us to see a product demo and learn more about Prezi for Sales.
Interactivity with a personal touch that includes everyone — that’s what attracted Michelle Singh to Prezi from the first time she saw it.
During her time working at the Miami-Dade Public School System, Michelle was first introduced to Prezi because her students used it as a tool in the classroom. Then, a few years ago, she was attending a session as part of the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert program, where they spoke about Prezi Video. When she first tried it out for herself, all she had to do was import existing PowerPoint presentations and fell in love.
“What a great way to bring in something that’s already created and have that interactivity with my content and me on the screen,” Michelle said. “It allows me to create presentations with a personal touch.”
For the college courses she’s teaching, virtual workshops, webinars, workshops, trainings, and client meetings, Michelle uses Prezi Video to create welcome videos and lead live sessions to connect better with her audience and increase participation. She uses Prezi for these trainings to not only show teachers how practical of a tool it is, but also all of its possibilities for student engagement and interactivity. By using Prezi Video, educators can “have an added layer of visibility and creativity for your students to view this content, as well as more personalization.”
“Engagement and retention are definitely addressed when you’re using Prezi, whether it’s in the classroom or in a meeting,” Michelle added. “I’ve had meetings where someone made a great point or I want to reiterate a point, so I type it right there on the screen. And then that light bulb goes off.”
Check out her upcoming workshop on March 30, Creating a Culture of Engagement & Equity, if you want to see Prezi Video in action.
For 15 years, Michelle Singh worked as a classroom teacher, teacher leader, department chair, and district curriculum specialist and technology trainer for Miami-Dade until 2019. One year later in 2020, she founded LCT-E Learning Solutions, a leading education consulting firm that specializes in diversity, equity, and inclusion training and development. One of the reasons Michelle left her career as a public school educator was because there was a need for teachers to have research- and evidence-based techniques that they can use in the classroom, especially in a public school system where 54% of students are Black and brown. Michelle used her 20 years of experience and expertise in education to design the powerful proprietary EQUAL Methodology, a simple and effective framework to address the complexities of diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools.
“There are disparity gaps that exist in our educational system that need to be addressed, and we are really doing the work to equip teachers with the tools, strategies, and framework they need to bridge these gaps and meet the diverse learning needs, cultural needs, relationship-building needs, community needs, socio-emotional needs of students of color, and really of all students.”
Her daughter, who is in college now at Howard University, also matriculated through the system and faced similar challenges that Michelle had faced in school. It broke Michelle’s heart to see her daughter at the back of the classroom, being ignored. When Michelle migrated to Florida from Jamaica at age 9, she entered the Miami-Dade County public school system, the third largest public school system in the United States. As a student and educator in the system, Michelle faced similar challenges, which is why inclusion, and diversity, equity, and inclusion are so important to her.
“The reason that I decided to quit my 15-year career for this journey was seeing my daughter experience shame and pain as the only Black kid in her classroom — being ignored, not being understood — which broke my heart,” Michelle said. “It tore me apart to see my daughter this way, but it also lit a fire in me. That fire fueled my passion to support and empower children like 9-year-old immigrant me, my brilliant and bold Black daughter, and all the other Black and Brown students whose voices are silent in their educational settings. I have the tools, experience, empathy, and expertise to help them flourish and shine culturally, academically, socially, and emotionally. And to help them reach their full potential, despite the obstacles they may face. This is my why. This is my purpose.”
This is why Michelle gravitated toward and was encouraged by Prezi — it includes and engages all. Michelle is currently working on programs using Prezi for new teachers who want long-term guidance and mentorship, specifically when it comes to DEI. Everything she teaches is aligned with her methodology that addresses five key areas — the school culture, the pedagogy and practices of the teacher, how to build students’ skill sets and their mindsets, how to utilize relationships and partnerships within the school and the community, and how to leverage equitable assessments.
“That’s where Prezi comes in because students have access to Prezi as a way to show their learning,” Michelle stated. “Teachers have access to Prezi as a way to make their content more multimodal and engaging for their students to be able to consume it and learn it.”
It’s just a matter of a click. That’s how simple Michelle says Prezi Video can be.
When Michelle first started using Prezi, she started by importing PowerPoint presentations because it was easy and they were already done — it was just a matter of bringing them on screen with her.
“I tried to get teachers to see that it’s like the Staples Easy button,” Michelle said. “You already have the content and you’re more than halfway there. All that’s left is to try it.”
When Michelle uses Prezi Video for a virtual conference, other people are just sharing their screens. Most recently, Michelle used Prezi for a pitch competition, and Prezi definitely made her stand out, earning her second place.
“It has really amped up my game,” Michelle said. “There I am with Prezi on the screen, interacting with my content, which has totally leveled me up.”
Best of all, this platform is accessible and engaging for all, no matter where you are in the classroom.
What emotion does the course title “Rhetoric and Western Thought” invoke in you? For most at Texas A&M, it was one of the more feared courses in the Department of Communication and Journalism. For Professor David Tarvin, it was one of his favorite courses when he was a student.
Imagine his confusion when he heard one of his students crying outside of his office, upset over not understanding what David thought was fascinating material. She said, “It’s just Greek philosophy. It goes in one ear, and out the other.” Even though he wasn’t currently teaching the course, he had such fond memories of it that he decided to map out the Greek story that she was learning using a process called graphic facilitation. In basic terms, it means using pictures to help with learning. This method, one that is used in Prezi, helped her understand and appreciate the course in a more comprehensive way.
After that, David, who is in his ninth year of teaching at Texas A&M, requested to teach that course, in addition to his inner cultural communication and public speaking courses.
Remember childhood books with beautiful illustrations? David uses a similar approach to teaching, graphic facilitation, to teach his courses and make them more accessible to students. He has struggled with ADHD and dyslexia so he understands that hand drawing all of his lectures and using Prezi as a capture tool helps his students engage with the material that “lives a little bit more than with other software.”
“Using Prezi for my lectures makes the classroom experience more fun for the students, and for myself,” David said.
Because of how David organizes these concepts in his mind, he likes using Prezi because it allows him to envision his presentations based on how he can zoom in and out of topics. When he was writing his dissertation, he used Prezi to visualize his structure.
“If I had an idea that could be more developed, I would ‘zoom’ into it or ‘zoom’ out of it if it related to something broader,” David said. “It really helped me organize my brain for writing. I think in Prezi even when I’m not using Prezi.”
His punny images in the Prezi presentations that he shares bring modern-day laughter into a class about ancient comedy. For one of his lectures, David tells the story of Aristophanes, who was the first comedian, and showcases his play, Birds, where he uses each letter as a different slide and zooms out to a comedy club.
“In this lecture, we start talking about the rhetoric of humor, and how we can use humor to persuade, and using Prezi just shows that we can communicate language in an interesting way,” David said.
“And my favorite thing about Prezi is my zoom-out moments where it reveals my theme of the day.”
In another lecture, David shared the story of the Iliad, where his presentation zooms out to Brad Pitt’s face, who played Achilles in Troy. Using this approach helps the modern-day student feel more connected with an ancient text.
With the shift to virtual teaching, David was prepared with Prezi Video. He really loves that he can upload Prezi presentations and PowerPoint presentations and they appear right next to his face.
“I like having it next to me because I find students are more engaged if they have eyeballs to look at, rather than a PowerPoint presentation, and also that I can point to content,” David said. “I also like the feature of zooming into the video and then zooming back out to me as a speaker. It’s just so easy and seamless.”
When David worked at Louisiana State University, his adviser Dr. Nathan Crick was focusing his research on Marshall McLuhan’s philosophy of the medium as the message, meaning it’s not just the message that’s important, but equally as important is the way it’s delivered.
“And so when Prezi was first initiating, he realized this new medium could be a new message to get to students, which is how I got into it,” David said.
That same student who came into David’s office years ago is another Prezi success story. During her time at Texas A&M, she took more of David’s classes and had an even bigger interest in graphic facilitation.
Now, she’s a language, arts, and theater high school teacher in Dallas, where she draws out her lectures and then uses Prezi to present them to students, just like David had taught her. Prezi helped turn those tears of frustration into an engaging educational experience — not only in her past but also in her future.
Learning a new language is a challenge. Learning how to sing in a new language is another story.
Allison Upshaw, Assistant Professor of voice at Stillman College, a trained opera singer, and professional actress, uses Prezi Video to teach voice auditions and help her students pronounce foreign language words. Having the lyrics on screen as she talks through the pronunciation and allowing students to see her mouth as it moves, makes it easier for her to teach, and for them to learn.
If we take a look back at her journey, Allison was first introduced to Prezi in 2014, when she began using Prezi Present for teacher training content.
As she’s not a “PowerPoint girl,” she was drawn back into Prezi when she started working on her second doctorate in instructional technology and had to create more formal presentations.
“That fell right in with using Prezi for what I needed to submit, and I was able to keep all my work in one place, which is really important to me,” Allison said.
But the one product that she uses the most is Prezi Video. She’s participated in the Voices from the Field webinar series with our education team on how video can deepen the impact of blended learning, she’s been listed as a Staff Pick (which is a list of our favorite videos of the year), and frequently shares her teachings with the public in all her videos.
Additionally, educators have a list of accessibility standards that they must incorporate into all their teaching content. When it comes to Prezi’s template library, she appreciates those that are in high contrast because it quickly addresses some accessibility requirements.
Allison says that she’s not a linear thinker, jumps around a lot in her thought process, and struggles to go from A to Z. But when she uses Prezi Present, she likes to choose from our template library because it forces her “to think in a way people can follow” and easily structure her ideas.
She’s always thinking about her process as a facilitator and how she can engage her audience, which is why she became a Prezi Certified Educator Trainer in 2022. For a long time, she was very reliant on face-to-face interactions. She liked getting back into Prezi because it was familiar enough, and she found that she was able to effectively use it to interface between her and her audience while using Prezi Video for video lessons.
Given that her first doctorate was in arts-based research methods and critical auto-ethnography, Allison is committed to incorporating STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics) into her teaching. This is something that she believes she can showcase by teaching with and having students use technology like Prezi.
“All of this tech and science is important, but you also need the creativity of an artist,” Allison said. “The functional designs are great, but you want something that’s creative as well. If you can think creatively, then you can build new knowledge.”
The challenge for Allison is that most of STEAM tends to center around visual arts, and she wants to understand how performing arts can fit into tech.
“In the world of screens, there can be a flatness with technology,” Allison said. “It makes it more difficult to have an energy circle between the presenter or performer and the audience, where the performer can understand exactly how the audience is feeling.”
Using Prezi Video has enabled Allison to better tap into the energy of her audience even when she and her students are divided by the screen.
Allison also considers herself an arts-based storyteller, and she works to share stories of other black women who may not get the chance to tell themselves. She has just written a grant that will look at Black female landowners during slavery and Jim Crow. She’s planning to share the stories of these women and what it means to be a female landowner in a time when women weren’t allowed to own property and had fewer rights.
“So what are their stories? I want to find out and share these stories and summarize what they went through,” Allison said. “I’ll be sharing them in conference presentations, and using Prezi has helped me focus my ideas. I will use it to sum up their stories and share them in a concise way.”
That’s just another way that Prezi’s engaging tools can help bring meaningful stories to life.
When he discovered Prezi Video, Andrew Tarvin, a bestselling author and keynote speaker, said, “Holy schwow, this is the easiest, quickest way to do picture in picture, and it’s smooth, so I’ve been using it for all of my virtual presentations ever since.”
And now, he’s used Prezi Video for 121 virtual presentations and counting.
Andrew has delivered more than 500 talks, in-person and virtual, one of which was a viral TEDx talk that has over 13 million views (only half of which he claims came from his mother). He’s primarily spoken to corporate audiences, including Microsoft, IBM, NASA, and the FBI.
Typically, Andrew had been presenting in person, but when the pandemic hit, all of his presentations shifted to virtual. He hated the idea of sharing his screen, which forced him into a tiny little box. What he aspired for in his virtual presentations was to have picture-in-picture slides. He had tried other tools, including Ecamm Live or ATEM Mini, but then was hooked once he discovered Prezi Video in April 2021.
“I have a degree in computer science & engineering, so theoretically I could build out the perfect system using OBS and Elgato Stream Deck,” Andrew shared. “But Prezi Video already does it so well, there’s no reason to.”
Andrew’s keynotes and workshops cover a wide range of topics, such as how to build a culture of using humor in the workplace, how to be more effective while working remotely, how to deliver engaging virtual presentations, and how to make work suck less.
With Prezi, Andrew has also been able to collaborate and present side by side with other speakers. For one virtual presentation, Andrew presented alongside author and founder David Nihill, and they would both switch between presenting their Prezi video presentations.
What Andrew really likes about Prezi is how it enables him to connect with his audience.
“It’s primarily the ease to transition in and out of slides for me, connecting and engaging with the audience by making eye contact, while at the same time then bringing up a visual right next to me. Now I can be speaking and show a picture, video, or meme right next to me to make a point,” Andrew said.
Ease of use is a big part of his message and he demonstrates things that he wants other people to feel like they can do very easily. Therefore, he loves the function of designing in PowerPoint and then importing it into Prezi Video because it’s simple, quick, and effective.
It’s also enabled him to take slides that he had used for in-person talks and easily upload or import them into Prezi so he could get more use out of his presentations without having to reinvent the wheel — and just like that, he gets picture in picture.
“It lowered the bar in terms of what it takes to get started while also raising the bar of how engaging virtual presentations can be,” Andrew said. “It made users feel like ‘Oh, I can do that,’ making it more accessible.”
Andrew also likes how Prezi Video’s desktop app makes recording so seamless, whether that’s recording a video in one take, or sometimes, 37. Features like presenter notes at the top of the screen, the pause functionality, and the countdown all make Andrew love using Prezi Video for recording asynchronous videos and as a capture tool.
One of Andrew’s favorite features is that he can edit his Prezi video presentations on the fly. While he’s on a call or sitting in the audience during a virtual conference, he can go in and change his notes to customize a point or add another slide to reference something that was said earlier, which always amazes his audiences.
“I continue to use Prezi Video because it is by far the easiest way to very quickly make a more engaging, more compelling virtual presentation experience. I can so quickly and easily get into picture-in-picture views, fluid slide transitions, fluid zoom in and zoom out,” Andrew stated. “It’s almost inevitable that people will ask, ‘How did you have the slides right next to you?’ and the answer is always Prezi Video.”
Most people were not taught about conversational presenting — a different approach to delivering a presentation that allows room for audience interaction — in school. Often, we were tasked with creating linear, static slide decks for assignments and projects, but not how to create powerful presentations that will be memorable for our audience.
“Presentations are for listeners, not for the people talking,” said Davide Luzzati, founder of presentation consultancy Luzz Presents. “You have to build the slides for the people that are listening to you, not for yourself. This is the main issue and even today, people haven’t understood this.”
After working in the tourism industry for more than 30 years, Davide realized that he needed to create a space for people to improve their presentation structure, design, and delivery. This is why in 2017, he founded Luzz Presents in Genoa, Italy.
“When you look around, most people have pretty average presentations, so I was dedicated to starting a company around helping people improve theirs,” Davide said.
Luzz Presents is a full-service consultancy agency, offering presentation, graphic design, and training services centered around Prezi. He thought about also offering services for PowerPoint or Keynote to his clients, but he chose to dedicate his services to Prezi because of how it shook up the presentation space.
“It’s changed the way that I was looking at presentations. Thanks to Prezi, I learned that I need to be asking ‘What’s the most important part you want to transfer to your audience?’” Davide added.
Davide’s interest in wanting to learn how to create the most compelling presentations and advancing his experience with Prezi is what prompted him to become a Prezi Certified Educator Trainer, which is a part of a certification program that aims to help educators and trainers learn how to effectively use Prezi tools to support instruction.
However, it’s more than just knowing the software. It’s also about how you use it.
“You could easily add 30 lines of text on a slide, but once you understand that that’s not effective, you can move to the next step of using a unique presentation software, like Prezi,” Davide said. “When you use Prezi, it’s a big help because you can organize your thoughts into topics and subtopics, use the zoom effect for emphasis, etc.”
Davide sees Prezi as a canvas, and has even designed a Prezi presentation using Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Vitruvian Man” as the framework for an anesthesiology presentation.
While Prezi has three different products, Davide stresses the importance of knowing Prezi Present.
“The baseline, I would say, is Prezi Present,” Davide stated. “That’s the most important because if you don’t know Prezi Present, you won’t get the most out of the other products.”
This year, Davide already has big plans with Prezi. In March, Davide will be using Prezi to teach an online course about presentation tips. He is also creating a 140-slide training presentation for an international food company, and is going to use Prezi Video to create TV spots for a local company in Italy.
“Prezi Video is astonishing,” Davide said. “It makes such a difference because you actually can still keep eye contact with your audience.”
His biggest plan for this year is to become even more in tune with Prezi. In Italy, Prezi is not that well known and Davide aims to become the “Prezi person in Italy” to help everyone there with their presentation needs and advance their presentation skills.
“I believe that Prezi gave me, and many people, the possibility to change the way you approach a presentation,” Davide added. “It’s so simple to build in, but so revolutionary.”
What do “Three Men and a Baby”, “Good Morning, Vietnam”, “Beverly Hills Cop 2”, and PowerPoint all have in common?
They all were released in 1987. This is why David Nihill, a founder, bestselling author, and comedian, wants to know why we’re still using old technology.
“I wanted the whole approach to be fresh, so if everybody is out there with their PowerPoint deck, it just looks dull and boring and stagnant, and it isn’t moving in any way,” David said. “Prezi was a way for me to say ‘new message, new approach, new way for me to deliver this message,’ and I think ultimately that’s why it was a better fit.”
According to David, our tools should evolve with us — as a result, since he discovered Prezi, he hasn’t looked back.
“It’s fun,” David said. “It scratches a creative itch. It allows you to just take a bit of canvas and go for it and make it cool and dynamic, and with PowerPoint, it’s very hard to do that.”
After getting his master’s in business, David worked for the Irish government; worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers; and worked as the Operations Director for the largest private education company for five years. David has taught programs at Stanford Business School and the University of Oxford using Prezi. But, he says he can undo the perception of all that hard work once people find out he’s an internationally touring comedian. Thankfully, Prezi allows him to show his credibility and his professionalism.
“It’s funny that all that can be done away very quickly with comedy, and the way I combat that is by having material that is very fresh, but looks very professional, and that’s where Prezi kicks in,” David said. “By the time they’re done listening, they completely forget the comedy element. They’re like, ‘Well, I learned so much there, and that was really funny and engaging, and I never heard any of it before, and that was really well put together.’ So it’s kind of funny, but for me, it allows me to balance comedy with the business stuff, and those are two big parts of my life that I don’t want to separate.”
Plus, it catches people’s attention. One of the most frequently asked questions David receives after any presentation is, “How did you make that?”
“There’s nothing about me that screams ‘professional.’ But when I’m on stage and I’m using Prezi and I’m giving a talk that I know all the beats of and I have a visual representation behind me that screams somebody put effort into this — when you combine those elements, the takeaway for the audience is always that it’s slick,” said David.
That remained the same when David began presenting virtually and used Prezi Video. For one of his first talks during the pandemic, he presented to the University of Oxford, and every lecturer and professor asked the same question of how he created the presentation.
What he especially liked about using Prezi Video was that “you’re not separate from your slides anymore,” eliminating the need for him to screen share.
David is also the founder of the FunnyBizz conference, which is dedicated to teaching modern businesses the essential principles of comedy, improv, and storytelling — by doing so, he can help them use humor to make an impact, add value, and connect with customers on a level that inspires loyalty and encourages laughter.
As a founder, he knows what goes into making it happen, and how to stretch some of their “deadlines.”
Most organizers will ask for their presentation a couple of weeks in advance to ensure that the presenter has their content created. With Prezi Present, David is able to easily send the link to the organizer by their deadline and still has the capability to make tweaks up until the minute he goes on stage.
“I could update the presentation last minute, and a lot of the times I actually sat in the audience and watched the other presenters. Then, I took elements from their talks, and I built it into mine, where the audience was like, ‘Whoa! How did he do that?’” David said. “Because there’s no conceivable way in their mind that I could have known in advance. That definitely allowed me to stand out in a lot of conferences for just being extremely different.”
With Prezi, you can take your audience on a roadmap, with a clear beginning, middle, and end — just like a good story.
“You’re never going to be able to do conversational presenting with PowerPoint, but you can with Prezi. The whole thing is built to encourage you not to put a giant pile of words or bullet points on a page,” David said.
For 2023, David is planning to embark on a 50-city comedy tour. Keep an eye out for him — chances are he’s coming to a place near you. Prezi and all.
For now, David wants to leave you with this lasting thought about Prezi.
“Prezi just looks great,” added David. “It’s more unique, and it gets people’s attention. They’re getting the visual representation of the exact journey I want to take them on. It adds a layer to public speaking.”
“If you tell me to list out how, I could write a big, fat book on it.”
That’s how Shehrevar Davierwala, a global computer science educator and assistant professor at RK University, Rajkot, Gujarat, answered when asked how he’s benefited from using Prezi.
It’s certainly made his life easier, especially in attracting students’ attention. As an educator who conducts academic workshops using information and communications technology (ICT) to “contribute a sense of diversity and inclusion within various cultural aspects” to students from 30 different countries, Shehrevar wanted a tool that would allow him to better connect with his students.
Shehrevar had been using Prezi since 2018, but in 2021, he discovered the Prezi Certified Educator Program, which is a program that aims to help educators learn how to effectively use Prezi tools to support instruction, whether hybrid, blended, or in the classroom. By enrolling in the Prezi Certified Educator Program, he completed courses on how to create engaging videos for blended learning with Prezi Video, how to create dynamic presentations and content bundles for students using Prezi Present, and how to create stunning classroom visuals and graphics using Prezi Design.
Since then, Shehrevar uses Prezi on a weekly basis. His typical workflow is to import his PowerPoint presentations into Prezi Present to optimize for Prezi Video, which he uses to record async videos or present to his students live.
“The first reaction is always like, ‘Hey, you’re making a YouTube-like video. How do we do that? Which software are you using?’” Shehrevar said. “And the most important thing is you’re able to connect with the students because you have the presentation running next to you, so you can point and show some actions. You have full control.”
For more information on how Shehrevar and his students have benefited from Prezi, check out the presentation below.
Since he has such a diverse group of students, Shehrevar encourages students to introduce themselves by showing off their country and culture to their peers using Prezi Present.
“So that’s where the first exchange of ICT is because we are learning a technology — Prezi — and how to use the presentation software,” Shehrevar said. “And through this software, there’s an exchange of cultural ideas.”
Additionally, Shehrevar works to make all his students feel seen. He paired with a student to design a presentation about building a virtual assistant, who voiced over it in Nepali.
Shehrevar upped his Prezi game with the announcement of Prezi Video in 2019, and now he leverages both tools to create a multifaceted learning experience for his students. Let’s take a look at what Shehrevar likes the most:
Since the pandemic, Shehrevar now follows the traditional flipped classroom approach. He shares async videos with his students for them to go through and complete their tasks. Then, in the classroom, they focus more on the practical aspects.
One of the most impressive features for him was using Prezi Video for video conferencing because it made it so easy to review what was shared in their online learning materials, as well as have a discussion with key points outlined live with Prezi Video.
“So this was one complete package, where the students just had to log in and they got everything together, and it made the video in the live session much more engaging,” Shehrevar said.
Another feature that Shehrevar really appreciates is Prezi’s compatibility.
“The best feature is that Prezi’s quite compatible with other software. Like, if I have a Google Slides or PowerPoint presentation, I can import it. Or, it’s easy to take a Prezi template and start something from scratch,” Shehrevar said.
One of the features he uses the most is being able to add collaborators. Whenever his students create Prezi presentations, they add him as a collaborator, which enables him to add comments to give direct feedback on specific slides.
In order to create his presentations, Shehrevar’s been using Prezi to create mockups. For example, for a class he’s teaching about Android mobile app development, he says that Prezi enables him to take his students on a journey and help them understand the flow.
“I use Prezi because I’m starting from the initial stage with the students and then slowly taking them on the path of coding,” Shehrevar said.
Using Prezi also gives Shehrevar the ability to incorporate storytelling and creativity into his presentations.
“I find that Prezi has made me more creative because you need to think more about how you design and how you add animations — not just about the content itself,” Shehrevar said. “And that creativity is one of the most important things as an educator.”
His work goes beyond the classroom, where he uses Prezi to support and train other organizations. One of these organizations is Afghan Tech Sisters, an initiative to train Afghan school girls in computer skills to motivate more girls to enter the IT sector by walking them through using Prezi. His commitment to these students is much more than just teaching them. Once they’ve completed their presentations and videos, Shehrevar showcases them on social to highlight their achievements and provide examples for future students. He has demonstrated how Prezi can support flipped classrooms to provide a better learning experience, introduce students to cross-cultural curricula in different ways, and connect them from all around the world.
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