After last week’s post, you may be asking yourself “What’s the Difference Between Sway and PowerPoint” or “Why Should I Use Sway?” These are valid questions that I hope to clear up today.

A quick recap: Sway is a presentation creation tool from Microsoft and PowerPoint is the most popular presentation creation software that we have used since the dawn of creation. (Kidding, I think it was created in 1987. So, it’s a little younger than me.) PowerPoint has a few other tools too but for our purposes, we are going to look at the Presentations tool part.

For things that are similar in both Sway and PowerPoint:

• Both are part of Microsoft Office
• Both can be used to create rich presentations
• Both support multimedia options including video, audio and images
• Both feature customizable templates
• Both can use Word as a base for creation

That is where they stop being the same.

Web-based (lives in Office 365)	Desktop based with an Office 365 access
Storyboard format	Slide based
Easily add OneDrive content	Content needs to be either typed in or copied in. Not able to add directly from OneDrive
Easily Insert YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia	Not easy to insert YouTube
Sway can make suggestions for content	You are on your own for content
Limited design options, can’t create your own content	Tons of design options including your own created
One Continuous Page with sections	Separate Slides
Can work together on it since it is web based	Limited ability to work on presentation together
Easy to Share directly with Facebook, Twitter, or even embed it into the presentation	Harder to share, especially if there are videos in PowerPoint unless everything is on OneDrive
Anyone can see a Sway with an Office 365 account	PowerPoint has an online version, but more features are available in the desktop version
Does not have Presenter Live or Coach	PowerPoint Live and Presenter Coach

Which is Better?

To answer that question, you need to answer this one first. “What are you trying to have the students accomplish?” PowerPoint has a steep learning curve with lots of bells and whistles. Sway is a drag and drop program that students can use easily. When I think about when I was teaching, I struggled teaching PowerPoint because the students focused on the non-content things like transitions and animations. Since transitions and animations are limited to non-existent with Sway, the students don’t have the ability to spend hours on it, which makes the students focus on the content. (As teachers, this is what we care most about.)

Whether you choose Sway or PowerPoint, both tools are great and offer the user some amazing features. Which is why you need to answer the question in the paragraph above first.

​Let me know what you think, try it out with your students and leave a comment below!