Take a look inside 5 images
Emaze
Pros: Original, professional presentations take student-generated info and ideas beyond PowerPoint.
Cons: Free accounts don't protect student privacy; user-generated content isn't always reliable or kid-appropriate.
Bottom Line: Polished, sleek presentations give kids great opportunities to present, but watch out for privacy and safety concerns.
You can use a tool like Emaze to scaffold your students' speaking and presentation skills. Find or create several different presentations on Emaze related to the topics or skills in your current learning unit. Divide your students into groups, then have each group of students study the presentation and develop their own speech and delivery needed to make the presentation a success. Student evaluation could occur to prompt discussion. All content teachers can utilize this site to help students hone outstanding presenting and speaking skills associated with balanced literacy and current technology. Of course, allow the students to create their own presentations individually or in small groups, and require them to use all of the design elements (images, media, audio, graphs/ charts). This can add to the depth of their research as they generate data and visuals to add to their claims and ideas.
Emaze is a web-based tool (and Chrome extension) that lets users create, save, and share presentations online. You can create a free account and access 38 animated templates, endless design options, and more than 2 million user-generated presentations. The tool can give teachers the opportunity to take their presentations beyond what a standard PowerPoint can do, with dynamic images, media, and charts and graphs. However, keep in mind that Emaze hasn't been designed with kids' use in mind, and some of the site's user-generated content could be inappropriate.
For teachers, however, intuitive taskbars and clear search options help users navigate the site's many features, and tutorial videos and technical directions on the support page offer further details. Whether you're using a free account or a paid plan, cloud storage and online collaboration are available. There are also features for advancing slides with voice control. You can create your own presentations from scratch, use the templates, or search for other users' content and use it for inspiration or further development.
Emaze's developers position the tool as a PowerPoint alternative, and the tool's many features make this a solid, easy-to-use tool for making engaging presentations. Since this is a presentation tool, there's limited learning built in. Indeed, the site doesn't manage the content of its user-generated presentations, so if teachers have their students use the tool, they should caution that user-generated content on the site isn't necessarily reliable and other users' presentations aren't acceptable sources for research or citations. Additionally, the site is geared primarily toward users 18 and up, so be aware that some of the user-generated content on the site may not be suitable for kids in school.
Teachers, however, can use the existing content on the site for inspiration or as a starting point for their own work. It can be a little challenging to navigate the platform's many features, but luckily most are intuitive and the support page's tutorials are thorough. If you do have students use the platform, they're likely to value the creativity and confidence it lets them bring into their work. Just be cautious about privacy; the good (but spendy) education plans give teachers and students more control over who can see and access their presentations, but the free accounts lack these features. Overall, if it's the right tool for your classroom, Emaze's flexibility and sophisticated design make it a solid way to create effective, appealing presentations.
Learning Rating
Great engaging presentations
I didn't like that the engaging animations where visible only through personal computers and not on other devices. My students love it. My students love it.
Explore Our Favorite Tools
