Tech Tip Tuesday: Office 365 Sway

Sway is a presentation tool within Office 365.  For the past 5 years I collaborated with the P.E. department to do a physical advocacy project.  In the first couple years we used Microsoft Publisher to create a 2-page flyer.  The next couple years we created brochures and took them to the local park.  I like to you Microsoft tools because teaching students to use the industry standard so they are prepared to use PCs beyond their Chromebooks is awesome.

This year I found Sway. What is awesome about this tool is you can share it via a link, or take the embed code and post it in a HTML webpage.  HTML coding is something I've been teaching to 7th grade for the past 5 years so now their research project for physical advocacy went from a newsletter that only myself and the P.E. teachers saw to a brochure that was posted at the park for the community to see, to an online presentation that can be global.

After doing a poll with students the 23 students that have used PowerPoint, Prezi, and Slides they voted 22 to 1 that they preferred doing the Sway.

What's nice about Sway is you can create a new Sway that is blank or from a template, you can start from a topic, or you can upload a document to start your Sway.

Students started from a topic, used the image search to find images with a Creative Commons license, and deleted the pieces they didn't want in their projects.

Try a new way of presenting this year and use Sway in your classroom.