Digital Tools for Schools: Presentation Tools

Slideshare allows your students to create presentations and share them with each other. SlideShares can be embedded into websites and blogs, and are easily shareable on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other popular social media platforms. They can be viewed publicly and privately. Connect with other SlideShare users via comments, “likes,” and profile pages.

SlideShare allows users to easily upload and share presentations, infographics, documents, videos, PDFs, and webinars.

Social Explorer allows the user to present data in a clear, visually comprehensive manner. In other words, in Social Explorer your students can explore and collect data, review it and create visual maps/infographics to share with students.

Statistics are gathered from 220 years of United States demographic data with over 20,000 socio-economic indicators between 1790 and the present. 

Social Explorer is a subscription database, but there are is some free data available.

Social Explorer has an extensive help/FAQ page.

Every image contains a story and Thinglink helps you tell your stories through three easy steps:

• Choose an image - can be uploaded from your computer
• Add links to any site, video or pictures to your Thinglink
• Share your interactive image by embedding it in a site or sharing a link

Aurasma is an augmented reality platform with over 40,000 customers operating in over 100 countries. Using Aurasma allows your students to create augmented projects, where every image, object and place has its own Aura.

Community Support Site

Prezi is cloud-based, meaning you can present from your browser, desktop, iPad, or iPhone and always have the latest version of your work at your fingertips. Create or edit on the go, then auto-sync across all your devices with ease. A free educational account allows the user to make their presentations private at no extra fee.

The Prezi support page has tutorials and an FAQ.

The standard presentation tools, PowerPoint, Google Drive Presentations, and Keynote (mac) tend to draw glassy-eyed stares from students and faculty. Who can blame them? We've all seen these types ofpresentatins and they tend to put su to sleep. 

This isn't the fault of the application, it is the fault of the creators and that can change!

Below the video are some points to follow if you are creating a slide presentation:

9 Tips for Making a Great Power Point Presentation

Keeping it Simple 

A boring Power Point presentation can make you snooze. But don’t worry; here are some simple steps to make your presentation cool and interesting: 

1. Plan your slides: Just like a storyboard, think about the message you want to share with your audience. What do you want viewers to take away from the presentation? Open with something interesting – a fact, a quote, a work of art, or some music! Now create slides that take you from beginning to the message you want to end with – and do it simply. Plan each slide. It takes some time but it will be worth it. 

2. One image per slide: Use one image per slide and very, very few words. Your narrative is the star of the show not the pictures. Choose images wisely and think: Does the image make sense in the context you are using it? Is the image appropriate in style, timeline, and content to your talk? Is it visually interesting but not too interesting?

3. No paragraphs! No bullets! – Think about it: If you are presenting in front of a group, you have great images that enhance your story and you are speaking, why would you put paragraphs of words on the slide too? How can your audience look at pictures, listen to you speak and read a lot of words on the screen? 

4. Pay attention to design: Power Point gives you the choice of a lot of templates. Make sure that the design you choose is appropriate to the theme of your topic. For example: You are presenting on Antonio Gaudi, the architect who never designed anything with a square corner. You wouldn’t use a hard-edged modern design theme for your presentation – would you? Think simple colors and background.

5. Keep fonts simple: There are two types of fonts, serif and sans-serif. A serif is a kind of curl at the ends of a letter and looks like Times New Roman orGeorgia. See the little serifs or edges added to each letter? It is difficult for people to read serif fonts on a screen. Sans-serif fonts like the one I am using here calledCentury Gothic or Arial are much easier for people to read on a screen. Save the Serif fonts for titles. When choosing fonts for a presentation do not to mix more than two. 

6. Stay away from crazy fonts that are difficult to read!!! 

7. Use a light background and dark text: This makes for easy reading. Even if there are only a few words your object is to have people listening to you and not being distracted by crazy fonts, lots of words, weird colors, animated buttons, swirling images or any of the options in Power Point that will drive your viewers crazy or put them to sleep.

8. Speak as if you are speaking to friends (you are!): Don’t over-introduce your presentation. Your slides are there to excite and engage your audience and to help you remember your talk. Keep your focus, make your point and move on to the next slide.

9. Have a grand finale! Leave your audience with something to think about.

PowToon defines their mission as: PowToon will create the world’s most minimalist, user friendly and intuitive presentation software that allows someone with no technical or design skills to create engaging professional “look and feel” animated presentations. Our greater vision is to effect the way people communicate in a profound way: “If a picture speaks a thousand words, an animation conveys an idea.” 

Powtoon provides all the animation tools you need to begin creating your own professional-looking animated explainer videos and animated presentations. From start to finish, you are guided through a simple process, resulting in eye-catching videos that will hook your audience without fail. PowToon helps you capture your audience's attention and imagination, far beyond the flat, stilted PowerPoint presentations you used to rely on.

There is a free account for anyone, and for educators and students there are very low cost accounts available with many assets.

There is a video tutorial library and a getting started page available onsite.