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.

Learning to Code Websites

The #CSforALL movement continues to grow. Many students are excited about this growth, while many teachers are apprehensive. Thankfully, many websites are designed to guide the students through their learning to code journey, allowing the teacher to act as a facilitator. In other words, classroom teachers at the elementary through middle school levels aren't expected to be coders or programmers themselves. These teachers can oversee the progress of their students as they begin to take interest in this journey. Look into the following sites to get your students started.


Code.org (K- Adult)
Most famous for the "Hour of Code," Code.org is a great place for students to begin their coding experience. Younger students learn the coding process through block coding and then gradually begin to use Java, a coding language. The site has really taken off with a teacher dashboard. Teacher's can create a section for students to sign into so their progress can be followed. Complete lesson plans and modules are ready to go for teachers to assign to students K- 5. Middle school teachers have complete lesson plan access to Computer Science in Algebra and Computer Science in Science materials. Code.org also offers free PD for teachers either in person or online. All of these links are found on their Teacher Dashboard Page. 

Scratch (3rd Grade - Adult)
Created by MIT, Scratch is a great site to learn coding. It is highly engaging for students as they get to create different scenes for characters (or sprites) to act out in. Scratch allows students to share their creations to a project board for others to see. Once students get started, they can click the Tips tab at the top of the screen and there are many tutorials to guide them through their learning process.

Codecadmey (Middle School - Adult)
Codecadmey focuses more on the coding languages than block based coding. I would recommend this site for those students who rapidly completed block coding and are ready for that next step. What I like about Codecadmey is that it clearly lays out the programming language options on a menu for people to choose from: HTML, CSS, JAVA, and PYTHON just to name a few.

Pencil Code (Middle School - Adult)
Pencil code not as self explanatory as the previous two sites, but it does have some great features. The Materials for Teachers page breaks down concepts one by one, allowing teachers to hone in on particular skills. It's almost like grabbing a particular "worksheet" off of the shelf for a specific skill. Pencil code promotes the student creativity side of coding very heavily. There are art, music, and game making playgrounds for students to explore. I'm not sure I'd start off with pencil code, but it is a great place to send the students that get through code.org's Hour of Code quickly.

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.

5 iPad apps for Student Presentations and Meta-Cognition

One of the best things about going 1:1 with technology is the amount of options students have to present their learning experiences. There are numerous apps out there that will allow students to display their thinking and make presentations both within and far beyond the classroom walls. Here is a list of a few apps that can be used for student creation in the classroom (listed alphabetically):

Book Creator Free

Book Creator is simply what is says it is, it is an app that allows students to create their own books. An added bonus is the ability to allow students to record their voice on each page of the books as well as embed pictures from their camera roll. I think this book has amazing journal potential for students. They could do a weekly math problem in the book and explain how they solved the problem. Over the course of the year you could see and hear how the students thinking has evolved. Of course the free version does have its down side, you may only create one book at a time.


Draw and Tell 

Draw and Tell is a great app for literacy usage in the classroom. Students can create drawings from scratch, or they can use the camera and stamps and stickers to create. After their artwork is complete, they can then record their story. It is partially interactive as they tell the story. They can move some of the objects as their story is told. Afterwards their creation will be saved to the camera roll.

The app is created by Duck Duck Moose and costs $1.99 in the app store. It is also part of the Drawing and Storytelling bundle by Duck Duck Moose.


Educreations Interactive Whiteboard

Educreations is one of the most popular apps for the K-12 classroom, with good reason. This is a great tool for teachers to use to flip their classroom, but it can be an amazing tool for students to use to explain their thinking. There is a recording option as they work on the white board. This option records all of their actions as well as their voice. An excellent tool for not only student presentations, but to record the students meta-cognitive process as well.

It is currently free at the App Store


Explain Everything

Explain Everything is a screen-casting app with a ton of possibilities. Similar to Educreations, students can use it as a whiteboard to write and explain their thinking. So much more can be done as well. Slide presentations, websites, YouTube videos, and various other media can be embedded into the student's project. Students can build outstanding presentations and record their explanations as well.

I had the privilege of hearing Reshan Richards, the creative mind behind the app, speak at the Ed Tech Teacher iPad Summit in February. His passion about giving students a tool to explain their thought process was contagious. The app's ability for students to present not just what they are learning, but how they learned it is truly remarkable.  

Explain Everything is currently $2.99 at the App Store

Shadow Puppet Edu

Shadow Puppet Edu allows students to create slide presentations with speech. Similar to PowerPoint or Google Slides, students create an order to how they would like their material presented. Once they have created their presentation they can then add a voice over to their product.  A great tool for putting together quick presentations that can be easily shared inside and outside of the classroom.

iMovie Book Trailers

The iPad offers many creative avenues for students to present material to teachers, classmates, and the web. Apple's iMovie App (which is free for any iPad Air owners) is one of the best tools for students to utilize.

Inside of iMovie, there is a feature where students can create Trailers. Several teachers throughout the country love this feature for the purpose of student created Book Trailers. This is an excellent alternative to the old "book report." Students also have several different publishing options for sharing outside of the classroom.

The trailer feature is a great tool for teachers because it can be used teach students several literary elements:

Genre: The student begins the process by choosing a genre to describe their type of book. Now these may not be the exact same as the genre types that you teach in your classroom, but they are closely related and could be used to show genre comparisons.

Setting & Characters: In the layout sections of the Trailer project, students will have to identify the setting of the story as well as the characters. 

This is where students can have some creative freedom. They could simply add images that they find, or create and record scenes using their device.





Story Development/Plot: As they develop their book trailer, students will have to summarize the story development. Of course, you don't want them giving away too much of the story. As stated before though, this can become a much more creative project than the standard book report.

Benefits for ELL Students: Besides the creative avenues and literary components, iMovie Trailers can be a great scaffold for your English Language Learners. The Storyboard layout section gives the students great sentence frames to follow. These can be easily modified by the students by just changing a few words, or they can be completely re-written altogether.

There are multiple benefits to allowing students to use iMovie in the classroom, the best being the student engagement that it will create for both the presenter and the viewer.