BORED TO DEATH WITH POWER POINT? PREZI MAKE YOU DIZZY? THIS MONTH’S WEBSITE WATCH FEATURES EMAZE, A SITE THAT ALLOWS ONE TO CREATE AND EDIT, SAVE AND SHARE INCREDIBLE PRESENTATIONS ONLINE.
Emaze is an easy to use, Web-based tool that lets you create appealing presentations in minutes, using templates and ready-made slides. Because it is cloud-based, you can access them from anywhere and it even offers automatic translation from one language to another. You can create a free account to access a number of templates and design options, as well as other users’ presentations. There are also tutorial videos and support to help you navigate all the features of the site.
For teachers, you can use it for your own presentations, or to help learners create engaging ones for themselves, either individually or in groups. Online collaboration means that they can work together remotely as well – no need to set aside precious class time for group presentation planning and preparation. There is a wide range of design features from images and media, graphs and charts, and audio.
As a word of caution, the existing presentations are not necessarily valuable from a content point of view – nobody has edited or checked information for correctness or validity (or even appropriateness) but they do serve as inspiration for new creative and engaging ways of presenting. The free version means that all presentations are public, so this is a potential disadvantage, but there are special rates for educators to upgrade privacy settings if this is an issue.
Presentations offer a good way to assess learning – and should be used far more than they often are. Emaze helps you ensure that presenters move away from text-dense dreary slides that are read aloud, and offer an opportunity for students to be creative with the ways they demonstrate their learning.
Try it and tell us what you think …