Moovly for classroom presentations

When I first saw Moovly I knew it was a tool that could be used in education for creating animated videos and interactive presentations on condition that you are really interested in technologies because the tool is not the easiest of those I have tried.

What slowed me down was the process of adding animation to my slides. For a non-professional user, it is rather challenging. Had I persisted, I may have come to some result but luckily I had an idea of asking my students to test the tool. So, in a few days the video was ready. It was made by a 15 year old student Raitis who is good at English and brilliant at computers.

We had recently studied the topic of environment and he used this theme in his presentation. See what you can come up with using the Moovly tool.

Creating presentations on emaze

Recently I came into possession of a bunch of great pictures which were taken during my trip to Italy (arranged by my daughter who lives there), and I decided to kill two birds with one stone - share the images with you and try the emaze tool for making my presentation.

emaze is a great free online tool for creating presentations as well as digital stories. It lets you upload pictures, videos, add text and shapes to your canvas to get a nice linear slide presentation. It is best viewed on full screen which allows you to hide the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page and use the computer keys instead.

It took me a couple of days to complete my first emaze presentation, not because it was hard work but because I did a lot of other stuff in between.

emaze is easy to use, it does not have tons of complicated formatting tools to employ, but there are some really helpful features that make the creative process pleasant. While working on your slides, pay attention to the tiny pale markings on your canvas which indicate the borders of your presentation window. Also it is very helpful to preview your slides on the left-hand panel as you work on your presentation.
The author can also invite other people to collaborate on the presentation which is especially great for student projects.

Enjoy the show!

Mural.ly for creating Prezi-like presentations

Mural.ly is an amazing tool which lets you create interactive visual presentations in Prezi style but without the hyper zoom-ins and zoom-outs. Though it may not be as sophisticated as Prezi, it is definitely more user-friendly for students.

Once you get the knack of inserting (done by the drag-and-drop method) and formatting your images, text boxes and sticky notes on the canvas, the rest is just smartening up your presentation by adding decorations and frames that will turn your canvas into an interactive show. This took me the longest because the frames had to be adjusted to bring out the best of each element.
The sources of content are various, including Google, YouTube, Vimeo, Pinterest, Dropbox and more. Start from the left side menu, the building of your canvas is almost intuitive.

Mural.ly is great for student collaborative projects as it allows many users work on one canvas, even in real time. Mural.ly can be used for brainstorming ideas, collecting materials or creating group presentations.

Watch the video tutorial to learn how to assemble your online mural.





This is what you see on your mural.ly canvas while you are working on it.

Below is the final product after you have applied the show frames.
I am by no means an adept user of mural.ly, nevertheless I was glad I succeeded in creating my first digital mural.
Recently there have been problems with embedding the show, so I am just giving you the link to my mural.  Enjoy!
 

My #scoopit digest - the most popular tools in May/June

I looked through my scoopit website to find out which tools and software have produced the largest number of reactions during the months of May and June. The number of responses may indicate how serviceable and practical the technology is. It may also suggest which tools are in greater demand or more called for.


Free online mind mapping software - MAPMYself (Mapul) - 57 reactions
Multimedia tools for educators - 54 reactions
6 Top Tools For Creating Presentations In 3D - 54 reactions
Present.me officially launched today - 52 reactions
TweetShow - 52 reactions
Create interactive infographics - Infogr.am - 50 reactions
PDF Presenter - 42 reactions
Ezvid - Record Screencast And Create Slideshows - 41 reactions
How to create an animated presentation with #PowToon - 37 reactions
Viewbix - empower your video - 36 reactions
Open Sankoré | The Free Interactive Whiteboard Software - 36 reactions
Add Speaking Animated Characters To PowerPoint Slides With SitePal - 36 reactions
How to create a great prezi (iPad) - 36 reactions
Grabilla – ScreenShot and ScreenCast tool - 34 reactions
Conceptboard for education - 31 reactions


There are some fantastic tools that have failed to attract due interest from the site visitors therefore I'd like to point out some of them.

SnapCrab for Windows - Screen capture software (free) - easy screen capture with one click of the mouse.

CanvasDropr - How to create and back up multimedia presentations virtually? - a web based visual collaboration service that is available for free. It helps you to create presentations and place them on the digital canvas in real-time.

LittlePPT - Free Powerpoint Reader and Presentation Editor - a free powerpoint processing program similar to Microsoft PowerPoint, compatible with all formats.

How to make your Scoop.it work

I have been asked several times to share my experience about curating the content on the Scoop.it site.

I am pleased to see that my Digital Presentations in Education keeps gaining popularity, the number of visitors is growing daily and the magic score which measures the topic quality has reached 91 (out of 100).

I have been curating my topic for about 10 months and I have mulled over the principles that I stick to in curating my topic. They are simple and they are proven.


1. Pick a topic that is relatively narrow so that you can focus on one theme (instead of gathering a wide range of links and eventually going off on a tangent). This will attract the right audience who have true interest in your topic.

2. Pick a topic which you are familiar with and, better still, where you have some knowledge and experience because you will need to evaluate the resources you are going to scoop.

3. Be very picky! Don't scoop everything the sources offer, select only the most relevant articles or posts which will add new value to your collection.

4. Be consistent. Keep to the topic you have chosen, don't go astray when you see a new, fantastic tool or resource which is a gem but does not match your theme.

5. Scoop regularly. (Perhaps this is the hardest part.) New information gets stale in a day. Try to find all the new tools/ resources/ information/ reviews etc. pertaining to your topic that have been published on that day. It's no use scooping very old information except if it is extremely worthwhile and you wish to save it on your site.

6.  Check and double check how reliable and valid is the source you are going to link to your site. Verify the authenticity of the website. Out there I have seen so many fake websites which post stolen materials and disappear in a day or a week.

7. I have seen some curators write their own reviews of the tools or technologies they scoop but I have neither time nor skill to do it, and I believe the developers or professionals have said everything that has been worth saying on the webpage I am scooping.


My Scoop.it page is obviously useful not only to my visitors but also to myself. I return to it every time I need to prepare a new presentation or suggest a new tool to my students.
   

Student presentations in the classroom

I widely use presentations in the classroom, created both by me and my students. While PowerPoint is still the most popular tool among students, new tools and applications are getting used more and more often.

Today I had a lesson with my 18 year old students who had to prepare a presentation about a personality in the computer world.  For those who use Solutions by Oxford University Press, I can add that it was a lesson in Unit 8 about the biographies of remarkable internet personalities.

One of the tools that was used for creating the presentations was present.me. Those students who used the tool claimed that it was really easy to use but they were a little flustered by having to wait for the PowerPoint slides to be processed. For some of them it took long hours. They also realised that it matters very much what kind of a microphone you have - the in-built laptop mikes produce worse sound than the portable ones.

On the whole, they loved working with present.me because it was a more challenging tool than the ones they had been using so far and it produced more impressive and gratifying results than other tools.

Take a look at the presentation made by my student Monta.


Another tool that has gained popularity among my students is Prezi.

Below is the presentation made by Renate about one of the leading figures in the Latvian social networking world Lauris Liberts who has created frype.com. The presentation was accompanied by well-prepared oral comments which unfortunately you cannot see nor hear.

What are your favourite presentation tools and methods?

Creating Presentations on Digital Devices

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yggg/2141154996/

This is a guest post by Marina Salsbury who has written articles for my blog before here and here.

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Presentations play a big role in the business world today. Effective presentations are able to convey a rich amount of information to a large audience in a cohesive manner. In order to be able to put together a proper presentation, designers need to be able to utilize strong applications that cater towards specifically creating organized and professional presentations that can be relied on to convey information properly and effectively. According to MBA Online, branding is a highly psychological and literary arena. Presentations are great ways to use images and animations to appeal to an audience's emotions. Applications provided on different platforms allow for the most astute and professional presentations to be put together and organized for a professional setting and thus serve as an integral job in their position within the business world and other settings requiring presentations.

Some of the most new and innovative applications can be found on tablet devices (specifically the iPad). One of the most useful and most popular applications that is used on a regular basis to prepare presentations for projects is Keynote. Keynote is a presentation program that can be found on Apple computers and has been thoroughly reworked to operate on the Apple iPad. Keynote is a wonderful program for creating slide based presentations that can be presented to an audience in a stylish and engaging manner. One of its biggest advantages is that it seamlessly syncs between all of your iOS devices. You can develop a presentation on your MacBook, make quick edits right before your presentation on your iPad, and simply plug your iPhone in to give the presentation. It provides a very visual an engaging approach towards presenting and is a great way for engaging audience on a much more visual stimulating level.

Much like the previously mentioned Keynote, Powerpoint is a great visual presentation program that allows people to organize visually stimulating presentations. Powerpoint allows for presentations to be created that are infused with graphs and photos that support whatever idea or information is being demonstrated. Powerpoint is part of Microsoft Office and is infused with a great amount of features such as animation and the ability to import spreadsheet files to represent data in the form of a graph. Powerpoint is perhaps one of the most user friendly presentation programs and is widely accepted as the norm in professional and educational environments. Regardless of the product integration of Keynote, Powerpoint remains the most used presentation program in the world.

Flipping Book is an alternative presentation program that can be used on a plethora of devices. Not only does Flipping book allow you to import industry-standard formats into presentations (PDF and MS Office files), it's truly a cross-platform app by allowing you to use it on your computer, iOS, and Android devices. Flipping book simulates the literal flipping of pages in a book to allow for a more exciting presentation of material and information. Created to help fulfill marketing ideas, flipping book allows presenters to show data in a fresh and fervent manner. Flipping Book creates a more user friendly system created by engineers who were looking to find a professional and fun way to prevent material.

It is important when putting together a presentation to try and look as professional as possible. Fortunately these applications allow users to create innovative and engaging pieces of material that will engage an audience and convey material and statistics to a high degree. It is essential to be able to organize information in such a way that is conducive to a setting in which it can be properly presented. Presentations are a way in which presenters are able to convince and win over audiences, by displaying a wide range of information. It is important that only the best technology is used when conveying ideas to an audience so as to leave the best impression possible.

What is your favourite presentation tool?