On Wednesday, I presented a Prezi titled Drinking Culture and the Beliefs Your Students Bring to Campus to a group of RA's for RA Diversity Day. I know, normally we don't get to sneak alcohol education into diversity training - but this went over rather well! The entire thing took an hour and 15 minutes. I took the lead, and was followed with sections presented by our Drug and Alcohol Prevention Specialist at the Counseling Center, and our Director of Wellness.
I started with a hook: Some interesting alcohol facts about traditional beverages from Egypt and Kenya. I got my information from the 2004 WHO report on alcohol, which is quite a hefty document!
I talked about different minimum drinking ages in different countries, which led into a discussion of countries where alcohol is forbidden (for citizens) with a reference to Sharia customs. I think this religious component was really interesting, and mirrored it later by talking about the Mormon "Word of Wisdom" which also explicitly prohibits alcohol.
The quilt activity in the middle was probably the RAs' favorite part. We had them each draw pictures or words that represent the direct and indirect influences of their own family or community. We had some pretty creative quilt squares! The students really enjoyed sharing with each other, which drove home the point that everyone brings different experiences and influences with them to campus.
It took me forever to find vector world maps to use on Prezi. Then I found out Prezi supplies a vector world map template presentation that was way better than the maps I found, and I felt silly. So make life easy, and just re-use the Vector Maps in Prezi template.
What I learned: Don't reinvent the wheel, especially when the wheel is a vector map.
