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Create amazing presentations with Sway

1. What is Sway?

Sway is a simple to use tool for creating beautiful and engaging web-based presentations.
Sways can include text, images, videos, and lots more!

Teachers can use Sway to create and share interactive lessons, assignments, study guides, trip reports, and best practices. Students can use Sway bring assignments, projects, reports, and study materials to life in a new way.

Sways are responsive to your screen size, so are beautiful (and readable) whether you are viewing on a computer, TV, phone, or tablet.

You can also simply embed Sways into websites, blogs and OneNote books.

2. How do I get started with Sway?

Sway is available as an app for Office 365 Education users – or you can sign up for free at sway.com. (There are also apps available for Windows 10 and iOS.)

You can start with a blank Sway or convert an existing Word, PowerPoint or PDF document into a Sway.

This video shows you how to create a Sway and explores some common options:

Once you have created a Sway, you simply share the web address with your friends, teachers, parents, or the whole world. In a school, you are able to restrict it so that only people with a school email address can view your Sways.

3. Where can I see some examples?

a) I made this Sway for my sister to show her how to make Anzac biscuits:

b) A Sway I made to demonstrate simple interactivity ideas:

c) There are lots of great Sways from students and teachers collected here: https://docs.com/sway-edu

d) Some more great examples of Sways in Education

4. Where can I find out more?

Once you have mastered the basics, check out this awesome Sway for 10 Top Tips and Tricks to make your Sways look great:

10 Quick Ideas for Student Use of Office Mix

Office Mix is a free add-in for PowerPoint that contains everything you need to easily create and share interactive online videos. You can include voice, video, digital ink, polling and interactive apps.

mix-example

Office Mix is great for educators and students! (Mix currently requires PowerPoint 2013 or 2016 on Windows.)

I have spoken to lots of teachers who are using Office Mix to create presentations, videos and activities for their students. It is also a simple way to get started with the flipped classroom. I often use Office Mix to support professional learning workshops.

There is a great site for teachers full of tips, examples and scenarios: Office Mix for Teachers.

However it is a great tool for students as well. Here are ten quick ideas for student use of  Office Mix.

10 Quick Ideas for Student Use of Office Mix

  1. Use a blank slide for mindmapping in group project work; record your conversations for evidence.
  2. Create a Mix TV ad to promote the book you are currently reading; use quizzes to get feedback from your peers.
  3. Create Mixes teaching local culture, history etc. for students in different countries (particularly where time zones make Skype a bit impractical).
  4. Record compositions or class singing and share with parents; include lyrics and animations so parents can join in karaoke style.
  5. Scan or photograph student work and record peer feedback.
  6. Create a Mix of a learning project or story; include videos, photos and scans or work, add a voiceover to tell your journey.
  7. Recreate a historic speech – use creative commons images and sound clips to enhance.
  8. Display the work and results of a science project from hypothesis to conclusion; include quizzes to collect peers and parents thoughts on the results.
  9. Create a virtual tour of the school for your school website – include quizzes to test new students and visitors .
  10. Collate the best slides from all your Mixes to create an end-of-term Mix and share with the rest of the school and parents.

Happy Mixing!

This video shows an example of Office Mix being used to demonstrate student understanding:

Introduction to the CSER MOOCs for WA

A quick video to show you how to access the CSER MOOCs and find your way around:

For further information, check out the CSER Digital Technologies website.

We run a range of Digital Technologies Programs for Australian teachers, including our free, online CSER MOOC courses, free professional learning events, and our National Lending Library.