5. Design and present support slideshows

There are many tools to create presentations: Genially, Google Slides, Prezi, Powtoon, PowerPoint... (those are the ones I have personally tried). And the question always is: "Which one should I use?". That always depends on what you want to create. If it is something simple, PowerPoint is a safe bet. If you want people to get a mindmap of the parts of your presentation Prezi is the one you should use. For simultaneous collaborative work I always reccomend Google Slides. For fun videos, Powtoon is the right one. However, the best one I have found so far is Genially. 

The task I was assigned was creating a presentation. However, I wanted it to be interactive, so I created a double functioning presentation: it can be used both by the teacher to present in the classroom or as an interactive presentation so that students can study and review at home. It is designed for 6th year of Primary Education, in the subject of Natural Sciences.

Critical questions and problems encountered

My first struggle was related to the template to choose. I did not want to start from scratch, as it is very hard to do so. Nevertheless, I did not want to leave it as it was. Something I did to give it a nice detail was to personalise the icons shown in the background, using only science-related ones. 

Then I also had to choose how I wanted to navigate through the document. As I wanted it to be also used as a tool to study at home, I added questions at the end and made it a microsite. The information said by me as a teacher is added as windows so that students can learn with them, trying to remember and then clicking to check. At the end, it has an option to play with the information: by answering 4 questions you get 4 digits of a code, and if done correctly you can download the following badge:

Discoveries

As I had used it before, there was not much about the way it works for me to discover. Something I really like is that they have added new templates. Moreover, it seems they have added new scenes and illustrations. This is perfect for me, as I am a very visual person. 

They also added the option to create links to "go back", "first page", "previous page" "next page" and "last page". This facilitates creating microsites and games.

Uses or connections

I believe that the best summary for this section is the following screenshot. It belongs to the Genially webpage, and it appears when you click on "create Genially". These are all the options provided by them. However, the way you apply them is up to you! 

Martyrating

🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙

Pros: 

• You can share with others and work collaboratively.
• Free templates are varied and appealing.
• There is an option for proposing templates (it is very nice from them, to be honest).
• There are sources for free images: Unsplash, Pixabay and Giphy. 
• All the elements can be animated.
• Navigation can be changed to fit a regular presentation, a video or a microsite.

Cons: 

• You can work collaboratively but not simultaneously, you need to take turns.
• Premium templates look very engaging, some even more than the free ones. 

I hope you enjoyed this post!