The primary audience for my prezi is first-year college composition students. Instructors who are teaching the same course may also use this prezi to introduce the first chapter of Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal."
Purpose
The purpose of my prezi is to introduce chapter one of the novel, "Invisible Man," to first-year college composition students. It is primarily an instructional tool intended to offer biographical information about the author, Ralph Ellison, as well as, provide some historical and cultural insight into the novel. Students will also use the prezi to practice writing thesis statements and topic sentences to support them.
Transparency
For my prezi, I chose an image of a faceless (invisible) person as a visual metaphor to represent Ellison's theme of invisibility. In 2013, this visual metaphor was used to represent Trayvon Martin, the unarmed African-American teenager who was killed by neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, in Sanford, Florida. Also, I wanted to show how "non-traditional" forms of relate to some of the traditional literature that we read in class. Some of the text that I have written fades in to create visual interest and to emphasize a point or question. For example, at one point, I ask, "Which side do you think Ellison supports in "Battle Royal?" I intentionally fade this question in and out for emphasis. My intention is to give students a clue that this an important question to critically reflect on and to analyze.
Hybridity
The prezi uses images, text, and video to provide information about the topic. I include a Youtube video which dramatizes chapter one of the novel. There are also photographs of the author and of the novel included in the prezi.
Limitations
Transitioning from one idea or subject to the next is challenging when designing a prezi. I do not think this transition is as much of a problem if you are talking students through the presentation using a prezi because you can easily fill in the gaps. However, as a stand alone presentation, prezi can be abrupt when transitioning between topics and ideas. I did not want to get too caught up in the "bells and whistles" that students would be distracted from the goals of the lesson.
