Playing with Adobe Sparks

It's the Rusty Show...

       
         This is my slide show of Rusty, my 2 year old Shetland Sheep Dog, Sheltie for short.  I showed it to one of the classrooms I visit and they loved it.  It was short and sweet.  The students now know who I'm talking about when I say Rusty. 

         I think using Adobe Spark slide show is easier to use than Goggle slides when presenting photos.  There are multiple presentation templates you can chose from, Instagram to posters.   I wanted a slide show and I choose the show and tell version.  The version just gives you words in each slide to help guide your thinking process.  It has all the basic components to share the presentation. I love the fact you can record your voice and you don't have to hunt for the feature.  The music in the background spruces it up and it looks and sounds like a movie.  I did notice that I could not change the color of the fonts once I chose my theme.  I tried to move the wording over darker background colors so you could see it.

         The one difficult part I encountered, but made it through, was converting my cell phone video to upload into a slide.  I downloaded Adobe Creative (Adobe suggestion) cloud and it converted it for me.  Overall, I would suggest using Adobe Spark for a quick slide presentation.

Just One More Slide

I enjoyed making this slide show.  This is my first time using Pear Deck.  I have a 30 day trial to play with the settings and options.  My options were limited with this version.  I would have liked to use multiple choice when asking questions but that is in the premium package.  I felt the options were mostly open ended questions.

My slide show on the Solar System was created for my Virginia Alternate Assessment Program (VAAP) students.  In the pre-lesson,  I have them do a think-pair-share.  It gets them thinking about what they already know about the solar system.  The students then have to talk to their side partners and then to the whole table.  It gets them communicating with each other and it lets me hear what background knowledge they have on the subject.  At the end of the lesson, I have them put the planets in order (which is the Aligned Standards of Learning (ASOL) and then have them tell me two things they have learned from the slides.  

I like this method of teaching because it gets rid of all the worksheets and it can be interactive if you do it on the Smartboard with the class.  The slide show is time consuming but you can save it or share it for the next years to come.  

More than just a Presentation

Above is my Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game for Fifth grade Science, using Google Slides.  I had fun putting this game together.  I used a template from Ditch that Textbook.  

I had to play with the format for a bit; I kept on multiplying slides and moved the boxes around. (Thank goodness for the Undo button).  I found a short cut in the process of making the slides: I was able to copy the question and answer from the first slide and paste to the next slide so it looked constant and the answers stayed the same. When looking up questions for the game, I based them off of the Fifth grade SOLs from the vdoe website.   

I will be using the Ditch that Textbook website more now.  I love it when my students have fun learning.

Using Google Slides:




My Slide show about my intro to CLM


Putting together a slide show is difficult for me.  I want to put a lot of information on a slide but it doesn't fit.  I have to just put keywords on the slides and I am always afraid I will forget what to say or someone reads the slides and doesn't know what I'm talking about.  
Another problem I had was making the slides pop.  I did not have a lot of choices for backgrounds like a normally do in PowerPoint.  I did like the fact I could work on the same doc and home and at work without emailing it back and forth to myself like with a PowerPoint presentation.

So, I did a little comparison on Google slides and PowerPoint with the help of Presentation Guru

Google Slides	PowerPoint
Free with a google account	cost money with Microsoft 360
Hard to access offline	Can be accessed online and offline with not problem
Lacks in templates	Infinite templates, 3rd party templates available
novice, intermediate, Lacks complexity for advanced users	Great for novice, intermediate and advanced users
Only supports Youtube videos	Can support many video platforms (add-ins)
Online collaboration and sharing on one doc	Emailing back and forth with different versions
Able to convert into files	Able to convert into files
Not very compatible with other platforms, only uses Android, iOS and gives offline accessibility via Chrome OS and the Chrome browser	Compatible with Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, as well as online accessibility options via browser using Office 365 and Office Online web apps

In the long run, PowerPoint has more bells and whistles but it comes at a cost: Microsoft 360 is very expensive.

Hyperdocs

Montgomery Hyperdoc

Above is a link to my HyperDoc on the Colosseum in Rome, Italy.  I had a hard time thinking of what to teach using a HyperDoc.  Using the template was helpful but finding items that they suggested did not work.  
I had ideas of what I 
wanted to use like 

https://hyperdocs.co/

Nearpod but the user
 would need a subscription 
to the link.

My lesson 
plans were like this but I had the assess to the activity and would share it with the class on the smartboard, not have them assess it.  I will practice using HyperDocs and teach other colleagues.