Week Six Blog Post

Presentation Applications

This week in class, we went over the various applications that are available for use. We also had to use one of these applications to present what we were planning to do on Halloween day. The presentation applications we were introduced to were Haiku Deck, Prezi, PowToon, and Emaze I reverted to Google Slides because of my familiarity with its functionality.

HaikuDeck seemed like a more simplistic version of Powerpoint. There is so much appeal with this application because of this reason. The mobility of this application offers individuals who are on the go an easy place to work on, and show the presentation with only a few touches. They offer stock images and allow you to focus on your topic with a few bullet point, rather than cramming too much information on each slide. Prezi, PowToon, and Emaze seemed a little too flashy for me to use in a practical way.

For my presentation, I used Google Slides. I chose to use Slides because of how closely it resembles Powerpoint. My presentation included various animations and media from the web relating to my expected festivities. Everything worked pretty well, and I was pleased to see that the presenter device worked with Slides as well. 

For the App Smackdown, I chose to present Wikr, an encryption based chat application. I went over the uses for it in terms of the computer science student or professional. People want privacy in the digital age more than ever, and Wikr provides that privacy for in regards to direct communication. Wikr takes the text from the user sending a messages, encrypts the message, and delivers it to the recipient without it getting into the hands of any other third party.

In chapter 3 of Untangling the Web , the author goes into presentation alternatives and how to use them effectively. Overloading your presentation with unnecessary information will just make an audience disinterested. Simplistically adding media and animations to your presentation can totally change the way your message is conveyed. Poll Everywhere is something in this chapter that I found very interesting. It makes getting the opinion of your audience as easy as them whipping out their phones.

For the Livebinder reading, I chose "10 Best Powerpoint Alternatives Comparison ." The video presented by PowToon explains that using pictures will scientifically make your audience remember your topic better. People only hear 10% of what is said, in comparison to 60% of what they see. The article goes over additional tools, such as Keynote, Prezentit, and SlideRocket. Jordan Pepper provides the pros and cons of using them.