Presentation Tools that Ignite Student Creativity

I am an educator who is constantly in search for tools that promote student creation over student consumption. For years PowerPoint, Prezi, and Google Slides have been the "go to" presentation tools that allow for some student creation in the classroom. At times, many teachers and students look for something different to use, something a little more engaging for their audience.

There are many free online presentation tools out there, but I am going to highlight a couple that your students can use to create with.

Adobe Spark

Example of a Adobe Spark Web Story

Spark offers 3 different presentation types: Social Media Posts, Web Stories (similar to a PowerPoint), and Videos. All three types are simple for students to use. Students can search for media and information without having to leave the application. This allows for a more efficient presentation development time. At the end of the presentation, all of the photos are automatically cited. For students wanting a professional looking product, Adobe Spark is an amazing option.


Buncee Edu

Buncee is a fun and simple tool for students to create engaging presentations. The platform is set up like PowerPoint/Google Slides but caters to kids more creative side. As with Adobe Spark, backgrounds, pictures, animations, stamps, and several other media types can all be searched and found within the app.

Buncee's click, drag, and search options are simple to use for all learners.

Digital Tools for Flipping Your Classroom

This post originally appeared on The FETC: Future of EdTech Insiders Blog

At FETC, I was delighted to attend a session by high school foreign language teacher Rachelle Dene Poth titled, Flipping Classrooms: Trading Spaces and Places Digital Tools and Ideas to Empower Students. During the session Rachelle gave attendees several resources for flipping learning for students.

However, before those digital tools were given, Ms. Poth set the stage for the why she wanted flipped learning for her students. She explained that she had a need to connect students to her classroom resources no matter their location. If a student is absent or forgets a textbook at school, they can still access the content/resources to stay current with the students in class.

Another aspect of Rachelle’s presentation was explaining the importance of putting the students in the driver’s seat. She gave examples of how she has students create their own presentations, quizzes, infographics, and more. Ms. Poth even discussed the benefits of using these student made digital projects as resources for other students to learn from. This made me think of the SAMR model and how transformative learning can be for our students when they have the flexibility to choose a tool that lets them display or explain their thinking. Rachelle’s suggestion for this was to take small steps: “pick a class to try something with, set parameters and have students create their own.”

Rachelle had many wonderful tools to share. As you look over the following list, it is important to remember to start small. Pick one or two that sound interesting, and try them out. It is easy to get overwhelmed with all of the tools out there, so take small steps for success. Ms. Poth’s presentation and handouts will also be linked in this article as well.

Now, on to the tools!

Tes Teach with Blendspace: A building tool that allows teachers to curate content for lesson delivery packages. Websites, powerpoints, Google Docs, YouTube Videos, and more all in one convenient location for your students. All of these resources can inserted right through the Blendspace search bar, or connecting your own accounts. Simple quizzes can also be created. No more multiple tabs from several links, just one clean lesson flow. The lessons can be shared several ways: a classroom in Blendspace, Google Classroom, or any other method of link sharing. Works on all devices.

Today’s Meet: A backchannel tool that allows for written conversations between teachers and students. The beauty of this tool is that it allows for a full transcript to be saved and printed. This helps keep a log of everything that was discussed in the session. An excellent tool for teachers to use during virtual office hours for students.

Quizizz: Similar to Kahoot, quizizz is a fun competitive way for students to take a quiz. In Quizizz, quiz questions are actually on the screen of the device, not just the screen in the front of the room. This allows for a quiz to be a homework assignment as well. As discussed above, having students create a Quizizz themselves based off of the content in your classroom can be a great way where students can be creators not just consumers with their devices.

Nearpod: A lesson delivery system that gives the teacher control of the student’s screen. Think of sharing a Powerpoint file or Google Slide with your students, but being in control of when the slides change on their screen. Nearpod also allows for interactive questioning, where student answers can be anonymously shared with classmates.

Formative: A student response system allows for multiple question types to be asked. Students can answer questions by multiple choice, drawing, short answer, and more.

Educreations & Explain Everything: Two very similar student explanation tools. Just as their titles imply, students create (by hand or typing) and record their voice to explain their thinking. These can be powerful tools for meta-cognition in and out of the classroom.

EdPuzzle: A student response video tool that allows teachers to bring in YouTube or other videos and add questions to them. These questions are added during the video so as the student watches, it will pause and ask the question.

Buncee: A presentation tool with creative interactive elements. Buncee allows you to add animated characters, videos, and voice over to each slide that you are working on. As with Educreations/Explain Everything, a child can use the voice over to explain the content that they place on each slide.

There were other resources shared by Ms. Poth at the workshop and below you will find the links for them. She is also on twitter, and is well worth the follow! @rdene915

Flipping Classrooms Google Doc with Links

Flipping Classrooms Presentation Link

Picture Surfing for Students and Teachers

Part of the purpose for student usage of technology in the classroom is to allow students to become creators not just consumers. A large part of this creative process for our learners is the resources that they find to put into their product. In this case we are talking about visual resources, or images.

Many students and teachers go directly to Google and search images. They then copy and paste away. As many of us know, this can rise several issues. Two of them being:

1. Inappropriate images appearing within the search.
2. The use of pictures without permission of the rightful owner.

These issues (and several others) have created the need of safe searching creative commons photos for educational use. Luckily there are several websites that students can go to for that very purpose!

Photos for Class - Just as the title says, this site allows students to search for photos that are appropriate for classroom use. The photos also include auto citation, and creative commons photos for use. If a student search does bring up an inappropriate image, it allows teachers to report it to be removed.



Pics4Learning - Pics4Learning is another safe place for students to search for needed photos. The organization of the site is excellent, and allows students to easily search by category.

Pexels - Pexels is full of large sized creative commons stock photos. Some of them are truly breath taking. Pexels was created for student and adult usage, so it isn't quite as filtered or safeguarded. There isn't anything extremely inappropriate, but some images could contain things like alcohol usage and mild adult situations. Students, especially younger students, should be monitored during the usage of this site. Nevertheless, landscapes, citiscapes, and other stock photos are excellent on this site.

*Addition to original post: These sites try their best to filter out inappropriate photos. As with anything online, there is nothing completely safe. Inappropriate pictures could still appear on these sites. However, they are still safer than simply searching google photos.

Supporting ELL Students with EdTech

Over the last 13 years, I have spent my career in education in the Springdale School District in Springdale, AR. The 3rd and 4th grade classrooms I have taught were at about a 75% or higher ELL (or ESL) population. As I have seen the boom in EdTech over the recent years in our district, I have really paid attention to the technology tools that are available to help our ELL students succeed.

There are several tools out there to provide the scaffolding and support to these students, but I am just going to focus on a few of them for this post: Translation Tools, Auditory Tools, and Recording Tools. These tools are nothing new in the world of technology, but as more students are able to access technology in the classroom they should not be overlooked.

Translation Tools:

Google Translate
 used on iPhone

The translation tool I have seen the most success with is Google Translate. It works very well in multiple ways:

• Tablet/Phone App: The app allows you to point your camera at a sign and translate it to a different language. It also allows you to speak one language into the device and it will translate and speak out loud in another language.
• Google Search/Website: If you search google translate, a text box will appear at the top of your search results that allows for instant text translation. translate.google.com also does this function.
• Chrome Extension: The Google Translate Chrome extension allows you to change the language of any website you are looking at with a few simple clicks, never leaving the web site you are viewing. 

Auditory Tools: 

I am defining auditory tools as any type of tool that reads texts to students. Many of our ELL students comprehend speech at a much higher level than they are able to read (in English). The use of auditory tools will allow students to hear the content needed even if they are struggling to read the words on the screen. There are several text to speech apps out there, but the following have worked best for me:

• iPad/iPhone: I simply use Siri. This is activated through the accessibility menu within settings. Students can change voice accents and also speech rate.  
• Chrome: I prefer the extension SpeakIt! Voice accents and speech rate are also controllable. 

As mentioned, I realize that these may seem like fairly simple tools in today's high tech classrooms, but the importance of what these tools can bring to our ELLs should not be looked over.

Recording Tools:
Apps that record student voices, screens, and actions can make a great impact with our ELL students in two ways: comprehension/assessment and reflection/meta-cognition.

Comprehension/Assessment - Giving ELL students the option to record their voice to explain a concept and turn it in to their teacher is critical. Our ELL students comprehend information at high levels, many of them just have difficulty putting their learning and understanding into writing. Why not allow them to record their understanding verbally and send that to the teacher for a comprehension check/assessment? There is a relatively new website/app called Recap just for this purpose.



Reflection/Meta-cognition For decades, coaches have recorded players on the field and reviewed it with their players. Music directors have recorded performers and had them listen back for reflection. This can now be done with every single student in the classroom. Having students record their thoughts through screen-casting, audio notes, or video will allow them to reflect upon their learning and presentation skills. This is only effective if part of the assignment is that the student listen back to their recordings for that reflection piece. There are so many great tools out there, but a few to check out are:
Chrome Extentions: Screencastify and Snagit Chrome Extensions.
iPhone/iPad: Book Creator, Draw and Tell, Educreations, Explain Everything, Seesaw, Shadow Puppet, Tellagami, and simply just use the camera. (If you would like to learn more about some of these apps, then check out my post 5 iPad apps for Student Presentations and Meta-Cognition)

As with everything with EdTech, it is important to not get wrapped up in the "bells and whistles" of an app/site, but what it really offers your students. In the case of our ELLs, thinking of how these tools can support language development should be our number one goal.

Accessing free eBooks with Open eBooks

Last month EdSurge and several other news outlets released an article about Obama and the White House releasing millions of dollars worth of eBooks to kids in Title One and Special Ed programs.

I jumped in right away to see what this was all about. The program runs through First Book and an app called Open eBooks.  Right now, the app only works on tablets (iPad/Android), but the Open eBooks company informed me that they hope to have a web based version out later this year, so if you are a Chromebook district, keep your eye peeled!

I have made the following tutorial to guide anyone who wants to get signed up!

iPads in the Primary Classroom: A few apps to get you started

As we continue to go 1:1 in our district in Springdale, AR, one of our biggest challenges is finding great apps for our Pre-K, Kindergarten, and 1st Grade classrooms to use.

Here is a short list of just a few FREE apps to get you started:

ABC - Magnetic Alphabet Lite for Kids - Learn to write!
By Dot Next

Just as the title of the app suggests, this is simply a magnetic letter board for your students to use. The letters are easy to pull from a tray and drag and manipulate. 

Talking ABC - Magnetic Alphabet for Education in English and Spanish

By Tatiana Churanova

This is basically the speaking version of a magnetic alphabet board. The voice is fairly natural, but can sound a little strange on some words. When choosing the letter, it names the letter for the student, but will not make the sound of the letter by itself. As soon as you start to blend the letters together, it will begin to "sound it out" for the students.


ABC Alphabet Phonics - Preschool Kids Game Free Lite

By Innovative Investments Limited


A great app for students learning to or struggling with identifying letters. A voice on the app says a letter name, and the child touches the letter to identify it. As they progress, more letters are added to the screen to make it more challenging for the students. A highly engaging app, with immediate feedback for the students.


Little Writer - The Tracing App for Kids

By Innovative Mobile Apps

A great app for students to learn how to write letters and sight words. The app will not let a student continue until the child traces the letter according to the path the app displays. 

To help this process transfer into their handwriting, teachers could have students write the letter or word on their iPad onto a piece of paper as well. The use of a child friendly stylist is a great option as well.
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These apps can be a great way to get your iPad classroom started. Of course, there are many great apps out there, and these are just ones that I have seen success with. Feel free to comment below on other apps that are worth trying out for our primary students!