This week, Prezi zoomed into New York City!

We hosted a workshop in the the Mobility Shifts “Future of Learning Summit” at the New School— as well as a special “Prezi Zooming Happy Hour” in Soho.

Thank you to all the enthusiastic and fascinating people who joined us for these events!

At Mobility Shifts, Head of Marketing Drew Banks (pictured), and Founder Adam Somlai-Fischer,  led a session using Prezi as an educational tool for visualizing and sharing ideas.

Attendees used Prezi Meeting to explore concepts of where and how education will take place in the future.

On Wednesday, we also hosted the Prezi Zooming Happy Hour at the We Work Lounge in Soho:

Adam  Somlai- Fischer spoke about Prezi’s mission to facilitate the open sharing of ideas, and about his experience growing the company from a hand-coded ZUI prototype to a community of over 5 Million.

We look forward to seeing you at future events and Zooming Happy Hours in more cities soon!

Signing up for the free Public Prezi account has become even easier. Now you can sign up with your Facebook account, and start to create your first prezi immediately.

Embed prezis to your Facebook wall

Sharing nice prezis from our public library, or put your latest work to the test in your Facebook community became more effective as well. Paste the link of any public prezi as a status update to our official Facebook page. Your link will be converted to an embedded prezi that can be clicked through or set to full screen straight from Facebook. It works just like YouTube video embeds.

Please note: if you already have a Prezi account, you cannot log in using your Facebook account.

We’re excited to release the new version of our iPad app featuring some long awaited updates:

1. pdf support: PDF graphics and documents embedded to your prezi shows are now supported on the iPad.
2. share prezi links: tapping a prezi link you received in email, chat, text etc. on your iPad launches Prezi Viewer and downloads the prezi automatically – easy to share and view.
3. swf support: Prezi uses flash – now iPad users can fully experience the magic of zooming presentations (swf animations are not yet supported).

In this update we focused on two areas: providing a full prezi experience on the iPad by removing hardware limitations (SWF, PDF support) and opening up your iPad to be able download and view any prezis out there. To get started we added a small library of prezis we like to the app. Go, explore!

We are constantly amazed by the many ways people are using Prezi to share and explore their ideas.

One area we’re particularly excited about is how people are using Prezi in the classroom.  From creating complex lectures on brain science,  to teaching children exploratory learning in groups,  teachers and students of all levels are using Prezi to inform and engage their classrooms.

Now, we want to hear from you!

In honor of school getting back in session this year, we are pleased to announce the Prezi “Zoom Back to School” Contest:

Showcase a lesson that you’ve built in Prezi, and tell us how you use Prezi to teach, learn and explore different ideas.  Zoom out to illustrate your science project, or zoom into your plans for a semester abroad. Be creative, and make your prezi relate to the 2010-11 school year.

One Grand Prize Winner will win a new iPad with the Prezi Viewer, so they can pinch and zoom on their Prezi in the classroom. Three runner-ups will also win 1 year Prezi-pro licenses.

Here’s How to Enter:

CREATE YOUR PREZI
Tell us about how you plan to use Prezi to teach and learn in your classroom. Inform us about your topic, and what makes you so excited about it.

POST YOUR PREZI on the Prezi Facebook Contest Tab
Just visit our page and click on the “Like” button at the top. Then submit your prezi on the “Contest” tab at Left.

TELL THE WORLD
The Prezi with the most “Likes” on Facebook wins;  So get the word out about your Prezi!

WIN!
Grand Prize: Wins a new iPad 2 with the Prezi Viewer iPad app
3 Runners-ups: Win free Prezi Pro Accounts

Contest Guidelines:
Your Prezi  should showcase a “Lesson”  about the ideas you are excited to explore this year. It should teach people about your subject:
• Best Use of the Prezi Functionalities: How can you use the possibilities of Prezi in innovative ways to best illustrate your concepts?
• Most Fun!  How can you use Prezi to show just how excited/ passionate you are.
• Most Liked: Spread the word and get people to ‘like’ your prezi!

The “Zoom Back to School” Contest is open for submissions now until October 15th, 2011. Then there will be a 2 week voting period, until October 30th. Winners will be announced on November 1.

Thanks everyone- we look forward to seeing how you plan to  “Zoom Back to School”  this year with Prezi!

Submit your Prezi Here!

The Prezi team

After people have given successful presentations using Prezi on different stages around the globe, there are always some folks from the audience who catch them and ask about the presentation tool they used. The overwhelming majority of these conversations end on a high note: the speaker made an impact and those who just learned about Prezi go home and start working on their own game-changing presentations.

If life were only that simple… Our logs show that many who are interested in Prezi type funny, Prezi-like words into search engines when trying to get started. Below is a list of the top 10 misspellings we found on Google Analytics. Pronouncing them aloud helps to guess the part of the world from which it originates.

1. Prezzi
2. Prezy
3. Presi
4. Prezie
5. Pretzi
6. Preszi
7. Prexi
8. Prisi
9. Prizi
10. Prezio

If you are ever asked about the tool you were using on stage, just say: “it’s Prezi – with a Z like zooming.” And the name comes from the Hungarian word for: prezentáció”.

Templates

Most people see Prezi’s blank canvas as artistic freedom. But if you’re approaching a deadline, you may want a little guidance to kick-start your prezi. Introducing Prezi templates: you don’t always have to start from scratch.

To access Prezi templates, create a new prezi to automatically choose from one of 5 templates or a blank canvas. Prezi templates include:

With Prezi templates, you can:

The Prezi SF team and 50 Prezi users from around the Bay Area gathered last night for a Prezi Meetup in SF. Even though it was a local event, the evening had an international flavor – including Prezi employees visiting from Budapest and students from France and Greece!

Hosted in the downtown SF location of Nextspace, the evening included demos of the latest features, tips and tricks from two design teams (Prometis and alimatinc), and lots of giveaways. Attendees even got a sneak peek at a soon-to-be-released feature!

The Prezi team particularly enjoyed talking to users to learn about their challenges, applications, and wish-list of features for Prezi. We look forward to future Meetups – hopefully coming to a city near you!

The Prezi Viewer app for iPad just got better.

What’s new in this version?

1. Offline mode:
By clicking on a prezi in your iPad online library, you automatically download it to your iPad and open it from there. So you don’t need an internet connection to open the same prezi next time.

2. Completely redesigned interface provides a clear view of your online and downloaded prezis.
The screenshot below shows how the new interface design allows you to easily find and access your downloaded prezis and your library on Prezi.com. If you are disconnected from the internet, you only see your downloaded prezis available on your iPad.

3. Video file support:
Based on your feedback, we solved the issue that didn’t allow your video files to be shown with Prezi Viewer. Now all video file formats you uploaded using the editor on prezi.com will play on your iPad as well.

Upgrade today and let us know what you think!

We’re happy to share another great success story featuring Prezi: Andrew Jackson, a teacher at Hitchin Girls School in the UK won the “outstanding teaching resource of the year” award issued by the Times Educational Supplement, a British national award that celebrates the best in teaching within the UK. He introduced his submission in Prezi and believes that Prezi helped him create someting that stood out from hundreds of nominations from around the country. We asked Andrew to share his experience using Prezi as an education professional.

How did Prezi help you create an award-winning presentation?

Prezi helped me create something different and to make my work stand out – as well as being ideally suited to my subject material. I first saw a prezi around 12 months ago and imediately saw its potential within education for creating interactive content. Prezi allows me to produce an interesting and dynamic presentation of my work. However, more importantly, it also allows students to review the work we did and to show their friends what they learned through an embedded version in our school website. The additional wow factor that people experience when they see a prezi for the first time also no-doubt helped to impress the judges.

How does Prezi help you in your daily work?

I use Prezi regularly in my day-to-day teaching job. Not for everything – but whenever I want to review a topic or I want to work on many ideas that are connected I will use a Prezi – I find myself loathed to return to PowerPoint!

What is the student reaction to learning with Prezi?

After seeing the masterclass, many students have set up their own Prezi accounts to do their school work – they find the ability to work on a canvas and to “impress” their teachers with something better than a PowerPoint really useful.

What is the most important Prezi best practice you would share with other educational professionals?

DON’T use Prezi like a PowerPoint – you can equally produce a “death by prezi” presentation with loads of text – my award-winning prezi has very little writing and lots of images. There is also great power in screencasting your work – I have screencasted my astronomy prezi onto youtube with great success.

Andrew is also very active on our community discussion forum. If you start an interesting topic or ask a question, he might jump in under the nickname “AJ” and share his thoughts with you.