An introduction to Microsoft Sway and 5 ways for teachers and students to use it!
Microsoft Sway is a FREE web based tool that allows both students and teachers to create interactive presentations and other content very easily and seamlessly. Since it's web based, you can access it from any device at any time!
Sway provides you with three different options to create a Sway:
Start from scratch.
Start from a template.
Start by uploading a previously created document from your computer.
A Sway can be shared with specific people or groups, those in your organization with the link, or with anyone that you share the link with. In addition, users can add collaborators to their Sway to work together to create powerful content.
Here are 5 ways that teachers can use Sway:
Create a HyperDoc within Sway to share with students. Make sure that it’s visually engaging and contains learning experiences that include all of the resources that your students could need.
Create presentations with content to share with your students. Include videos, text, Flipgrids, etc and teach directly from your Sway. These can be shared with absent students so they don't miss the content from the days they are out. These can also be housed in a resource library (ie. OneNote) so students can access each day's Sway with the content for that day as they need them. Since they update in real time there is no need to press the “save” button! Students will always have access to the latest information.
Collaborate with other teachers and create a virtual professional learning library with resources from conferences or with learned content throughout the year.
Flip your classroom by using Sway to provide your students with the content using videos, text, and other interactive media, to review at home and then use class time to dive deeper and practice.
Create your classroom newsletters and share the link directly with your parents. This is a great way to keep your parents informed about what’s happening in your classroom. Include links to field trip forms, flyers for PTA meetings, etc. The sky's the limit for what can be included!
Here are 5 ways that students can use Sway:
Create book reviews. I LOVE this idea! Teachers could then take this a step forward and create a “Class Book Wakelet” to showcase virtual book reviews for their classes over the school year. If another student needed a book recommendation, they could go to the Wakelet and view all of the book review Sways created by their classmates!
Create digital portfolios within a Sway. Sway allows a platform for students to showcase their best work and share it with an authentic audience. Imagine them being able to showcase their growth over the course of the year!
Use Sway to create a presentation instead of using PowerPoint. Students have access to this free, intuitive tool to create presentations that are engaging and interactive.
Create science lab reports using Sway. As a former high school science teacher, I wish that Sway was around back then! Students can use Sway to upload their data, videos, and audio to show the demonstration of their learning while working through labs in their various science courses.
ELL students can create digital picture dictionaries as they learn the English language. Because all forms of media can be uploaded into Sway, ELL students are able to share their learning in various forms. This provides them with an opportunity for repetition as they not only type and speak words from the English language, but they can also upload audio and video as well.
Did you know that the Microsoft Educator Community offers a ton of free professional learning resources on any and everything related to Microsoft you could ever want to learn, including Sway! To learn more about Microsoft Sway, visit the Microsoft Educator Center (education.microsoft.com), create your free educator account and search for and complete the following three courses:
How do you use Sway in your classroom with your students?
Annnnnd that's a wrap! #ISTE19 is over and all I can say is WOW!
I have attended ISTE every year since the last time it was in Atlanta (6 years....I think!) and I have to say that this was my FAVORITE ISTE yet! For soooo many reasons! Like several of my other edtech friends, Sarah Thomas and Mari Venturino, I created a schedule of all of the events that I COULD attend if I wasn't too tired, running myself too thin, or just had the time to do so. Looking at this schedule before landing in Philly was definitely overwhelming. I had a lot of events that overlapped or started as soon as another ended. The point is, is that I gave myself options and choices. In the past, I ran myself crazy trying to get to EVERYTHING to see EVERYONE! Not this year. I must admit that there are people that I am super sad that I didn't get to see and hug and will make it a point to connect with them next year. ISTE is just so HUGE that it's impossible to see and do everything. Sadly, I also missed what would have been my first Google Innovator Energizer. This event always happens the day before ISTE starts. That day also happened to be my youngest son's birthday so being a mom had to trump being an Innovator. I hope to be there next year!
I have waited to create this blog post as I have really had to process what happened! LOL! I think the best way for me to recap this amazing experience is to outline it by each day. Here's my #ISTE18 blog! Sunday
Chilling in first class!
ISTE started off on a high for me! My flight going to Philadelphia was overbooked and I was going to have to give up my seat. At the last minute, they got me on the flight but moved me to FIRST CLASS! This was my first time riding in first class and I loved every minute of it! And of course I had to document it with a picture! LOL
Our Voice Academy
Meet Up!
We dropped our bags off at the hotel and walked to the convention center to get checked in and get a lay of the land. The convention center was HUGE! There was a ton of walking that occurred over the week! As a matter of fact, over the course of the conference, I walked the equivalent to a marathon! After getting situated, I attended the Our Voice Academy (OVA) meetup. It was refreshing to be around so many edtech educators of color that are working to share their voices in the edtech space. The third cohort of OVA members (I am in the first cohort) was just announced and I got to meet so many of them! I am excited to see how they take advantage of the opportunity as they begin to share their voices!
Quin (my Google
Innovator
Mentor) and I.
While waiting on the shuttle to go back to the hotel to get ready for all of the edtech meetups, I saw my Google Innovator mentor walking past the shuttle! This was a HUGE highlight for me as this was our first time meeting in person! I hopped off the shuttle and yelled, "QUIN!" It was him! We hugged and caught up for a few minutes! Quin is JUST as awesome in person as he is over email and Google Hangouts and it was a pleasure to meet him in person and hug his neck!
After leaving the OVA meet up, I headed to the Microsoft in Education Expert (MIEE) meetup. So many of my edtech friends were honored with some pretty darn amazing accolades! At the end of the awards portion, they played a video of images and clips of all of the Microsoft and Minecraft trainings that have taken place over the course of the year and it was exciting to see how many educators and students that the MIEE community has touched! We are a strong and mighty group!
Monday
Working at the
Microsoft Booth.
I got the opportunity to work at the zSpace booth and the Microsoft in Education booth and share the goodness of both with the tons of educators that walked by to check them out! I LOVED sharing how we use these resources with our students and teachers in Atlanta Public Schools. It was cool to learn from the educators that I interacted with and hear how they use these resources as well.
That's the cool thing about all of the technology that's out there. All it is is a tool! I always scream from the rooftop that it's simply a vehicle to deliver the content! That's it! You could have 100 different educators using the same technology resource and they could all be using it 100 different ways! That's why it's absolutely critical that educators engage in and have a meaningful PLN (professional learning network)! There's sooooo much to learn from one another!
My colleagues and I with the team at
@PlayCraftLearn!
My colleagues and I got to meet with the team at MinecraftEDU to talk about all things Minecraft! We got to hear about some updates and we also got to share with them all of the awesome things we do with Minecraft in Atlanta! Again, we were asked what support we needed and what we'd like to see. I love that they listen! If you think Minecraft is just a block building game, you are HIGHLY mistaken! There are TONS of educational resources, lessons, etc for ALL content areas built right into Minecraft!
I had about 30 minutes to run over to the Google Certified Trainer/Innovator meet up before heading to the next event! And although I told myself I didn't want to drive myself crazy getting to everything, it was important to me to attend this event as it was not only my first attending as an Innovator, but it was a chance for me to see and hug a lot of people that I hadn't had a chance to see yet! There are a ton of updates coming from Google for Education! One of the updates that I'm most excited about is the NEW Google Student Certification that is coming! Students will now be able to take an exam (similar to the Level 1 and Level 2 exams that we take to show our mastery of the Google tools) and earn a certification that they can then place on their resumes!
Delivering my "mic drop" at
Flilpgrid LIVE!
Then it was time for FLIPGRID LIVE! What an AMAZING experience! (Side note....how many times can I say amazing in this blog post? LOL) I was selected, along with 8 other educators to deliver a 1 minute "mic drop" about my "why" to 1,000 educators! This was definitely the highlight of ISTE this year! See the video below for my "mic drop." My coworkers and I decided to wear tutus and our "Techies in Tutus" shirts! It was too cute! During Flipgrid LIVE, there were TONS of updates announced! My favorite was the AR component! This is going to be a game changer when students return back to school! To be able to bring the hard work of students to life in a special way....I can't wait! I can't believe how many other edtech tools are now integrated with Flipgrid! It was like there was update after update after update announced! I don't know how they're going to top it next year! Read all about the evening on the FLIPGRID blog!
Tuesday
Tuesday morning consisted of a few meetings with different vendors. We were able to share how we use their resources in Atlanta and also make some suggestions for what we'd like to see in the future. I love that edtech companies are so willing to listen to their end users and actually incorporate the feedback they receive to make their products better!
Sharing how to use Google
Drawings to assess students
at the Google Playground.
I had the opportunity to share my love for Google Drawings and how to use them to assess students at the Google Playground that afternoon! I shared how I use them and provided a ton of resources with them. I also got to listen to the educators that stopped by my table and learn a few tips and tricks from them as well! Click here to access the resources that all of the presenters shared during their playground sessions! I love that educators are so willing to share what they do with others!
Mike Tholfsen (One Note
Avenger!) and I being
photobombed by Toney
Jackson
(@herhymeswithme)
My friends at Microsoft EDU hosted another awesome Hack the Classroom Event! We go to hear about a few updates and then heard from 5 different educators about their experiences incorporating the Microsoft Learning Tools (which compare to no other) into their teaching practices! The lives of students are literally being changed because of these learning tools! Students are learning how to speak English as a second language. I was inspired (as always) by Toney Jackson who shared the following message with us, "Your students are filled with potential they may never know about. Love your students. Dig into the core FIRST! If we don't care, what's the purpose? The imprint you leave on your students is a fossil and not a footprint." I love the family that Microsoft EDU creates with their team along with the educators that decide to apply to be Microsoft in Education Experts. They listed to the suggestions of educators and make updates to their amazing products based on those suggestions. Being able to attend Hack the Classroom in person is always a treat!
Wednesday
On Wednesday morning, I headed back to the convention center to make a few more connections and network with a few more people! It was my goal this year to find some great things that we might be able to use in Atlanta and I think I found some goodies! I will share all of those in another post! Once the conference was over, my colleagues and I decided to take a bus tour of historic Philadelphia. I am NOT a social studies person at all but the architecture and the stories behind the buildings were so intriguing! Here are a few pics from the tour!
It was so refreshing to NOT have to be anywhere in particular! I made it a point to spend a lot of time in the exhibition hall checking out new vendors and learning all about what they had to offer along with visiting vendors that I'm already familiar with to find out about all of the updates they were making to their tools!
As busy as I was, there was a lot that I missed. And I'm okay with that. There was definitely a joy in missing out. Not forcing myself to be at events that would cause me to run from one to another. I had an enjoyable time and learned a lot! I am rejuvenated to begin the 2019-2020 school year! Being around passionate educators that just want the best for their teachers and students has a way of energizing you. Listening to others has a way of showing you the possibilities. There is so much to learn. There are so many amazing people out there. I can't wait for #ISTE20!
Regardless if you were there or not, be sure to follow the hashtags #ISTE #ISTE19 #ISTE2019 #notatiste #notatiste19 #notatiste2019 to see what happened!
So there you have it! What were your ISTE takeaways this year?
I jumped in feet first and presented my FIRST Flipgrid FlipHunt! Annnnnnd it was pretty darn AMAZING!!!
So...what is a FlipHunt, you ask? Only the most amazingly awesome way to get your students engaged in learning! A FlipHunt is a video based scavenger hunt! It is run completely through FlipGrid and your students self guide themselves through it with very little facilitation from you!
My reflection:
First, let me say, I am VERY surprised at how easy it was to set it up! Once I came up with the actual questions and created the #FlipHunt document, the only thing left to do was set up the Flipgrid and the topic and set the participants free to hunt! They LOVED it! The energy in the room was so amazing! There was dancing and smiles and a WHOLE lot of laughing! I would DEFINITELY do this again and can't wait to continue to share it's ease of use and engagement with my colleagues and our students!
Setting it up:
So, how do you set it up?
✔ First, have a clear vision for what you want your students to accomplish as a result of completing the FlipHunt.
✔ Put together your actual FlipHunt! You can either put it together yourself from scratch, or you can search the Discovery Library and find one there! This is what I did for the professional development session that I led with educators last weekend! Basically, you are putting together a document with scavenger hunt type questions for your students to discover. They sky is the limit with this. It could be an internet search for information. A getting to know you activity. An activity that has them outside looking for different things in real life. You get the picture!
The FlipHunt that I used is below and it's adapted from one that I found in the Discovery Library! It's hyperlinked with viewing rights! Feel free to make a copy of it and alter it to meet your needs! I made mine in Google Drawings but feel free to use Google Docs or whatever floats your boat!
Here it is in action! That's organized chaos that you hear! Check out the young lady in the back of the room getting ready to do an arabesque! Oh yeah....she did that!
✔ Set up a Grid and your topic! Now that you have your FlipHunt all ready to go, set up a grid with the instructions for the FlipHunt and a link to the actual FlipHunt so they can access it! I actually displayed the FlipHunt on the board in the front of the classroom as well so they could see it instead of having to toggle back and forth between Flipgrid and the FlipHunt instructions.
This particular FlipHunt received 91 videos in less than 15 minutes!!! And that was with educators! Imagine if you did this in your class!
Here are a couple of ideas to get you started!
Math Idea:
What if you are a math teacher and your FlipHunt made students look for Geometry shapes in nature? Each of the questions on your Hunt could be one of the shapes (ie. quadrilateral, parallelogram, octagon, etc). As students found those, they would record a video and explain why that shape is the shape that it is!
Science Idea:
Have students create videos about the weather every day and talk about the different weather patterns that they see. If it were raining one day, they could talk about the water cycle. What if it were snowing? What effect does humidity have? These are all great conversation starters for your students! English/Language Arts:
Have students create virtual reading logs over the summer and spring break! Students can record their feedback on the books that they've read. Perhaps the FlipHunt has different genres of reading material that you want them to read over the breaks! Once they've read that genre, they record their video and move on to the next!
Social Studies:
Let's say your kids are studying the candidates for an upcoming Presidential election. Your FlipHunt could include questions/prompts about their platforms. As students located/discovered the information about each candidate, they would record their video on the grid and discuss the candidates outlook on certain topics versus their own!
As always, if you need more information about Flipgrid in general, there is a phenomenal resource out there from Sean Fahey and Karly Moura! It's hyperlinked below so be sure to check it out!
