Speaker Deck- A Good Presentation Tool for Teachers

June 23, 2015
Speaker Deck is an excellent web tool that allows you to easily share your presentations online. You simply upload your slides as PDF and Speaker Deck turns them into a beautiful online experience. You can then share your generated presentation with others using different options including a unique URL link, social media websites such a Facebook and Twitter, or use the embed code to embed presentations in your website.

Speaker Deck only supports PDF files and allows up to 50 uploads per day and a total of 500 all time. Here is how you can upload your presentation to Speaker Deck:

‘1- Sign into your Speaker Deck account and click Upload at the top of the page. You will be presented with a form to upload a PDF.

2- Click the Select a PDF to Upload button and a file browser will open. Select the PDF you want to upload and then click Ok.

3- When the PDF has finished uploading you will see a "Save the Details" button. Optionally enter a name and description and select a category for the presentation and then click Save the Details’

Check out this example to see the kind of presentations Speaker Deck can help you create.

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A Wonderful App for Remotely Controlling Your Presentations

June 22, 2015
Slides from de Mobo is a very good app that allows you to remotely control your presentations using your iOS or Android device. Slides works best with presentations on Google Drive, Prezi, Slideshare, Scribd, Speakerdeck and Issuu. To be able to use the app, you will need to have both your phone and your computer under the same WiFi network.

The way Slides works is pretty basic: Download the app ( for Android or iOS ) to your phone and once installed you open it up. Under the setting menu, click on ‘connect to computer’, an alphanumerical  code will be generated for you. Head over to demobo.com/slides and type the code in the input box after which a connection between the phone and computer will be established. A visual illustration of this process is provided in the video below.

Slides app also includes a timer as well as a variety of transitions to select from. Other features provided by the app include: Fullscreen note viewer by tap/holding note (single tap to exit); YouTube playback by tapping YouTube thumbnail; and more transitions and animations. Watch the video below to learn more about Slides.

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Top 4 Presentation Tools for Teachers

June 9, 2015
Fed up with the traditional way of presenting through Keynote or Google Slides? The four tools below are definitely great alternatives to use to create engaging presentations to share with students. We particularly divided the tools into two main categories: tools for creating slideshow presentations and tools for creating document/poster based presentations.

I- Tools for creating slideshow-style presentations:

1-Prezi

Prezi is a powerful web tool that allows you to create visually appealing presentations. You can start with a professionally designed template from Prezi’s library then use images, text, videos and zooming features to enhance your presentation. You can also collaborate with colleagues to build presentations. Prezi is available on iOS and Android so you can create or edit your presentations on the go, then auto-sync across all your devices with ease.

2- Haiku Deck

Haiku Deck is another wonderful  presentation tool for teachers. You can use it to visually narrate stories. It provides a variety of pre-made themes and templates to choose from. You  can  use Haiku's image library to search for images to include in your slides or upload your own. One powerful feature of Haiku Deck is that it automatically resizes images and shrinks text to fit in the slides so you will not have to bother with editing and resizing images. Stories created on Haiku Deck can be shared on popular social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, or be exported as PPT files or embedded in blog posts.

II- Tools for creating poster based presentations

1- ThingLink 

ThingLink is an excellent web tool that allows you to create interactive images online. The images you create come alive by adding to them text, videos, music, and links. ThingLink has also recently rolled out a new feature, which is still in beta, that allows you to add interactive pinmarks to YouTube videos. These pin marks can be links to other videos or websites.The ability to enrich images with different media content makes ThingLink an ideal tool to incorporate in your instruction.
2- Glogster

Glogster is a web tool and mobile app that allows users to create free interactive posters, or Glogs. A "Glog", short for "graphics blog", is an interactive multimedia image. Glogster empowers educators and students with the technology to create online multimedia posters - with text, photos, videos, graphics, sounds, drawings, data attachments and more. Some of the features Glogster app offers to its users include:

• Combine images, graphics, audio, video and text with a simple yet powerful Glog canvas
• Start with some predesigned templates, allowing you to quickly create impressive glogs
• Add flair to your glog with 10,000 unique educational graphics, categorized by subject
• Delete elements, close and preview glogs with simple gestures
• Edit photos and graphics with Aviary effects

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An Excellent Google Drive Tool for Creating Interactive Presentations

April 28, 2015
Pear Deck is a nice app that allows you to plan and build interactive presentation decks directly from your Google Drive. One distinctive feature of Pear Deck is that it includes some amazing formative assessment tools that allows you to engage the entire class with a series of questions on the content of the presentation.

When you present through Pear Deck you are actually creating a live session that students can join from their own devices. As a teacher, you have full control of the flow of the presentation and using your tablet you can even easily move in the class while  going through the slides in your projector screen.Pear Deck has a variety of unique interactive features (e.g. draggable, drawing, text or number, multiple choice…etc) that enable students to actively participate in your presentation and respond to your questions. Students responses can be shared in realtime and  anonymously on classroom projector or interactive whiteboard.

Watch the video below to learn more about Pear Deck

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Teacher-tested Tools to Help You With Your Presentations

February, 2015
Sometimes a simple yet well-crafted presentation can engage more of your students and even encourage class participation. Here are some teacher-tested tools that may help you with your presentations.

Annotate.net 

All the tools for your BYOD or 1:1 classroom. Retina quality Word, PPT & PDF Import, Annotation, Whiteboard, Collaboration & Screen Mirroring. Free signup!

Presefy 

 Broadcast your presentation to your classroom or any computer in the world, all from your mobile device.

Trimensional 

Scan and create a digital 3D model of any object using an iOS device's camera, then export it in various formats.

in3Dgallery 

Create 3D animated presentations out of images, videos, and even existing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

Office Mix 

Add your voice, audio, video, quizzes, polls, and other content to your PowerPoint presentations with this free add-on.

Want more? Check out these collections of tools.

Screencasting Apps 

This one is curated by instructional technology facilitator Kristy Rocquin.

Favorite Presentation Tools for Chromebook Users 

This is curated by two-way dual-language bilingual immersion teacher Jake Duncan.

By Mike co-founder of edshelf

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