If you have been to any of my Microsoft trainings over the last few years, discussed Office 365 with me, or noticed on your own, you might have seen a program in Office 365 called Sway.

Sway

​Sway is an awesome way to do reports, presentations, personal stories and so much more. Once you have the content prepped, you could create a Sway presentation in minutes. When I first learned how to use Sway, I created a Biography/Resume Sway. You can check out my original attempt at using Sway here​.

Sway started out as a digital storytelling tool within Office 365 and has grown from there. Sway is a block-based tool that allows students to create presentations with direct, easy to use tool.  A few ideas on how to use Sway in the classroom include interactive web-based lessons, WebQuests, newsletters, study notes, projects and more. One of the plusses of Sway is that you can use it on any device. It works well with phones, tablets and your browser.

As a tool, Sway has the ability to have students collaborate on projects or even create portfolios.

In our department we use Sway to produce a monthly newsletter. If you don’t receive it, ask your school’s tech coordinator to send you the link. You can also directly reach out to one of us here at DLA to gain access to the link.

This is Great…Now What?

With this in mind, we have to ask ourselves, “How do we use this in the classroom?” My first response is to use this instead of PowerPoint (which we will get into why next week). How does that work? Take a look at this example:

Imagine you have a student who is going to be making a presentation on a topic for your class. That student has a set of cards that they are going to use for their talking points. They also created a picture representing their topic that they are going to display. So far this is a basic presentation, right? Now imagine that the student takes their notecards and places them into a Sway to make an interactive display. With Sway built on the card format, the student can use text, images, videos, or more to get their point across.

Doesn’t that sound like a great way to introduce technology into your class and give students a bigger way to display their voice? A bonus for Sway is that it comes with already populated backgrounds and fonts. Students don’t have the ability to change them. This is a huge time saver, and it will even make suggestions for things to add to your presentation (another great tool).

If you decide that you don’t like the design and layout of your Sway, you can use the remix button which will change the design and layout of your presentation but not the content.

Another way that Sway can be used is taking an already completed word document and converting it to a Sway. If you read a few blog posts back, you would have seen in the Word updates that you can convert the document into a Sway. Here is a link to that post in case you missed it!

So go play around with Sway. Trust me, the students will pick it up faster than you will. Check out the next blog post to explore what the difference is between Sway and PowerPoint. Leave us a note in the comments below or on Yammer with your thoughts.