Prezi

A great new tool I just discovered is a presentation tool called "Prezi" (www.prezi.com) that puts PowerPoint to shame. Prezi lets you make dymanic presentations that viewers can follow while still maintaining an idea of the "big picture." Watch a demonstration of Prezi here. Once you've been wowed by the demo, click here for a tutorial on how to make your own.
Prezi would make for a highly effective teaching tool. Typical presentation tools like PowerPoint only allow you to create linear presentations, but not all topics are linear! Students especially often lose track of "where they are" in a long presentation; they can't figure out how the current slide fits into the whole of the topic. They lose perspective. A presentation made with Prezi, that kept students perspective on the whole instead of the parts, would be effective in promoting retention of presented information.

Prezi