Presentation Project Journal Entry

I decided to build off a project I just turned in about a week ago to my Microcomputer Applications class. My final paper was all about the history of animation through the technology that shaped it. For my presentation, I lined up about 20 clips from YouTube, did a screen cast, and did narration over it. I knew there was probably a better way to do it, but I was crunched for time (though I probably spent way longer editing than I needed to).

As far as presentation software goes, I was already pretty familiar with PowerPoint. It's ok, but nothing that really wows me. The board of the stage combat troupe I'm in had used Prezi for a couple years for our annual meetings, and I really liked how the presentations looked. I decided this was the software I wanted to try out.

Things I liked: The software seems really intuitive. You don't have to know a lot about it in order to make a presentation that works. It helps that they have templates to use. I like that they show the Hex color codes, and being able to copy/paste that made it really easy to do the ombre across the screen. I *LOVE* the option of embedding YouTube videos. Far easier to insert those into a presentation than edit together and narrate over. I also like that I don't need to click on anything to move the presentation forward. The fact that I can just use the scroll on my mouse to zoom in and out is fantastic (though the motion can make me a bit sick if I do it too fast).

Things I disliked: I hate that there's no option to set the font size. You can make it bigger or smaller, but it makes it really difficult to set a size for headings, subheadings, etc. across the whole presentation. Yes, you could copy and paste elements, but I already did that a lot for this presentation, and it was a major pain.

My next step in the process is to record audio tracks and upload them.

Update: my other projects are taking longer than expected, so I am not uploading audio tracks. Maybe in the future. HOWEVER, I do have the chance to test the presentation on a kid. My undergrad was animation, so my sister was asking me about cel animation the other day on behalf of one of the kids she nannies. He won't get to see it until Monday, so too late for this class, but I will get feedback from an external source! He's really interested in the process, so hopefully the early inventions in animation inspire him to try his own.