Thing 13: Presentations

As a 1:1 iPad school we are continually looking for ways our students can create and share presentations. As a person who occasionally presents at conferences I am always looking for creative presentation apps.

I have to begin by stating the apps I love the most, and the ones we are trying to embed into our curriculum in Park Rapids.

Educreations: I've written about Educreations several times. It is flexible, easy to use, and perfect for all ages groups and subject areas. I've used it to allow special ed students who were not able to present in front of their class to record their voices and then just play the presentation. I've used it to evaluate a student's reading or math skills. We used it in a integrated project to have students create an ad to promote the game they created (including music they had "composed"). The list could go on and on!

QuickOffice: QuickOffice connects with your Google account and allows students to use their iPad to create spreadsheets, presentations and documents, which then can be saved into Google Drive and either presented or downloaded into Microsoft Office for additional editing. This has been a lifesaver for us and I highly recommend it!

HaikuDeck: HaikuDeck is beautiful! It is also flexible and super easy to use. I love it because it focuses the creator's work on the CONTENT and not as much on the format. The final project can be saved and shared in a variety of ways, and operates similarly to PowerPoint. You can create the entire project on a portable device easily.

Prezi: The new Prezi allows for all work to be completed on the portable device. To be honest, unless the presentation is well structured, this presentation format still makes me a bit sick to my stomach, and I have not mastered its use! It is a great option, though, and one that I need to work on.

Lensoo Create: Lensoo is very similar to Educreations (and the whole host of other similar apps). There would have to be something awfully great about it to drive me away from educreations. One thing I'm impressed with is that you can import a PDF into the presentation. I think this would be a wonderful way to create tech directions. So often I create a direction sheet. I could put the direction sheet in as the background and then talk through parts of it that are confusing to people. It would add a whole new dimension to training! There is a great selection of symbols and shapes (arrows and stars and boxes, etc) that are easy to add, size and rotate. These are very helpful and give a little more professional look to the presentation. Recording is easy and allows you to pause throughout. It's easy to add pictures from the camera and photo album - but there doesn't appear to be a way to add an image from the web. Once I save the recording it goes into a "recording area". I can play it back but can't edit my work. I can post it to Lensoo online, but it doesn't appear that I can save it as a standalone video. (I can't with Educreations either). I'm not seeing much reason to stop using Educreations  in favor of Lensoo, but it is certainly a viable option for those seeking a recording solution.