Student Presentation Apps

Today was my district's annual iDevice Mini-Conference. I always love these conferences because of all the learning and sharing. There are so many good ideas that come from them! I facilitated two sessions on student presentations. Because of the focus on iDevices, I shared several apps that I love to use for helping students share their learning.

Rather than just focus on tools, I like to discuss ways to help students be better presenters. My inspiration comes from a blog post by Lisa Nielsen called Stop Letting Good Students Do Bad Presentations.  She outlines 6 tips teachers can use to help students be better presenters. I think these tips are more important than learning the apps. It doesn't matter how well students use the app or how easy the app is, if they present their content poorly all the hard work is lost.

My beginners session focused on 3 basic apps that are simple enough for students and teachers to transition from the idea of PowerPoint to doing the same style presentations on an iPad. The session handout can be downloaded here and the presentation is below.


Student Presentation Basics - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

The three apps I focused on for this session are

• Keynote
• Haiku Deck
• Educreations

In the advanced session I also added information about a new presenting method I absolutely love called PechaKucha. PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where students show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and students talk along to the images. This helps them be concise and stay on topic. It forces them to let pictures tell their story.

The session handout can be downloaded here and the presentation is embedded below.


Engaging Student Presentations - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

The three apps I focused on for this session were specifically chosen because they don't follow the traditional slideshow format typically used in PowerPoint.

• ThingLink
•  Sock Puppets
• Adobe Voice

These are some simply, yet powerful apps that can really help students be creative and show their learning.

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Student Presentations: Moving Beyond PowerPoint

Last week I presented at the Clark County School District Blended Learning Mini-Conference at Valley HS. My session was on Student Presentations: Moving Beyond PowerPoint. When I signed up to present at the conference I hadn't planned on this topic, but when it came up I realized that it was just right for me!

I have a strong aversion to PowerPoint, mostly because presentations are designed so poorly with it. I've sat through enough presentations where the presenter put too many words on a slide, used text and graphic animations that are unnecessary and distracting, or just looked amateurish. There are a number of digital tools out there that can help make presentations more engaging to watch.

My goal with the session was two-fold: help teachers understand the need to teach students proper presentations skills (after all, it doesn't matter what tool you use if still don't present in an effective way) and share alternatives that can easily be used to create effective presentations.

The Haiku Deck used for the presentation is embedded below or you can view it here side-by-side with my notes.


Student Presentations - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

I gave participants a one page version of the points I made.

I also created and shared a chart listing all of the digital tools I shared. The chart lists information about each tool so teachers can make informed decisions about what tools to try out.

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Adding students in ThingLink: The Nightmare Begins

Today was the third day of working with a 3rd grade class using ThingLink. The first two were a failure because I spent the entire time straightening out student logins. It wasn't until this third session that students could start working on their project and even then there were a few problems. The student management component of ThingLink needs to be rethought.

At first blush, setting up student accounts in ThingLink seems to be straight forward. First you need to make sure you have an education account by logging in through the ThingLink Edu page. After your account is set up you'll have a Students button that takes you to a screen where you can create groups for each of your classes. Within each group you then have the ability to create student accounts or have students with existing ThingLink accounts join your group. This is where the process starts to fall apart and the nightmare I experienced began.

The first choice lets you create student accounts, supposedly without using email addresses. The teacher types in the student names and clicks Register Students. Student accounts are then created using an internal email format which looks like random characters. For 3rd graders it was impossible to remember. All contact info for the students, including password recovery links, are sent to the teacher's email. Passwords are also randomly generated and included a mix of upper and lower case letters - again very difficult to remember. The username and password only appear on the screen one time, so if the teacher doesn't print them out she will not have that information and will need to reset their password manually.

Because it was so difficult for students to type in their username and password we ended up using our entire class period trying to get logged in. I thought a better solution would be to switch student accounts to their local school email address, which luckily our district allows. However, in doing so the teacher then loses control of resetting passwords, since all those requests go to the student email address. Nonetheless, I tried to teach the students to go into their account and change their username to their school address and the password something easier to remember. This took another entire period to accomplish.

Other options for creating student accounts both require students to create their own account first using an existing email address and then use a code to join the class. This works only if the students have an email address and it doesn't offer the teacher any management abilities over passwords.

A much better solution would be a model similar to how Educreations or Edmodo creates student accounts. Students are not required to have email addresses and teachers have some control over username and passwords.

ThingLink is an awesome resource and students were very engaged when we could finally get them logged in. But the company really needs to rethink how student accounts are created and managed or teachers may abandon it out of frustration.

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Awesome iPad App: ThingLink

ThingLink is a digital tool that provides users with the ability to turn any image into an interactive masterpiece. Create multiple hot spots on specific parts of the image that launch videos, text, audio, and links to websites. The website and iPad app versions have similar functionality. ThingLinks with full interactivity can be embedded on any web page.

ThingLink is free, either on the web or as an iOS app. When creating your account on the web, teachers should be sure to do so from the ThingLink Edu page. This lets you set up groups and students.

Setting Up Classes and Students

1. Click the Students button and then create a group.
2. Click Register Students. Follow the directions carefully to enroll your students. You’ll need to print out the list of usernames (fake email addresses) and passwords. Students can change their email address and password from their own profile after they’ve logged in.
3. Manage Groups lets you reset passwords and view student usernames.

Creating a ThingLink

1. Click the Create button.
2. Upload an image or click Web and paste in the URL. This will be the base image that becomes interactive.
3. Click anywhere on the image to add a tag or hotspot.

4. Paste in the URL for any resource: image, video, audio clip, or website.
5. Enter text as a caption to the multimedia resource or use text as the information that appears in the hotspot.
6. Change the icon for the tag/hotspot.
7. Save the tag and reposition it if necessary.

ThingLinks can be shared by Tweeting, linking or embedding on a class blog. You can even embed your ThingLink into Edmodo!

Integration Ideas

• Use a map as a base image and identify historical places, link to current temperature, local attractions, and regional recipes. 
• Create a photo collage and add links with descriptive adjectives, synonyms, antonyms, etc.
• Use a picture of a famous artwork as a base image and add links to information about the artist and their other works.
• Create an interactive author presentation adding tags to book lists, book trailers, and bibliographies.
• Music teachers can link to audio recordings of composers, sounds of instruments, vocabulary, and biographies.
• Assign a ThingLink image to prep for a class discussion.

Find even more inspiration for using ThingLink in your classroom:

• 73+ Ways to Use Thinglink
• 65+ Ways to Use ThingLink In Your Classroom

Download the Tech Integration Challenge for ThingLink and see if you are up to the challenge!

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