Two Great Tools for Creative Presentation Options - Think beyond PowerPoint

Update 11-25-2016:  I still love Adobe Spark, but I've learned a couple things since I used it more in the classroom this year. First, users have to enter a date of birth to sign up. Students under 13 will not get access. Also, we have run into problems with the video feature on Chromebooks. That option seems to work best on regular computers.

Teachers often ask me for presentation options that get them beyond PowerPoint. Adobe Spark fills this need perfectly!

I just finished new videos for easy, creative presentations and projects using Adobe Spark. I showed these (and Posts, the third option) to teachers a couple weeks ago and they took to it immediately. It came out in mid-May, too late for me to push it big in my district, but I suspect it will be a very popular tool this new school year.

Keep in mind both of these tools should be useful for teachers and students. They work great on Chromebooks or any computer. iPad apps are available too.

I strongly recommend that every teacher learn these tools before school starts up. Believe me, they won't take long to get the basics.

This first video is an overview and some tips for creating what they call Pages. These are very attractive webpages that can be used to tell a story, report on a classroom activity or just about anything else you'd make that uses pictures and text.

The video is below, but here's the sample page I created and that you'll see in the first part of the video.

This next tutorial features the Adobe Spark Videos. The tool is by far the simplest one I've found for making an attractive digital slideshow. Even adding narration is a breeze.

You might be interested in these related posts:

• Adobe Spark Posts - The third tool in the Adobe Spark suite is called a Post. It's a picture with text. 
• Using Adobe Spark for Making Narrated Slideshows - This video shows how to go from Google Slides to a narrated digital slideshow using Adobe Spark Video.

Question and Answer Sessions with Game Designers

I worked with students in our game design virtual club to generate a list of questions to send to game designers. Here are two replies that I received. In each video the designer answers several questions.

The first response is from John du Bois. He is the designer of Avignon: A Clash of Popes, a game that was successful on Kickstarter earlier this year.

He answered these questions from my group, as well as some from a game design class taught by Kevin Crowther:

• How do you know if a game you are working on is good?
• Do the rules of games have to follow certain guidelines or can they be however the designer wants them to be?

The second video is from David Whitcher. Several of David's games have been published, with the most recent one, Star Trek: Five Year Mission, making a big splash at GenCon last year.

He answered these questions and a few from the other class:

• What kinds of games do you think publishers want? And what are some types you think they don't want?
• What software and books do I need to get started?

David told me later that the free online class he referred to is from this site. He said it is for both digital and non-digital games and it should be good for beginners. He did point out that he disagreed with the way they used the term "playtesting". Both David and I (in all materials I've written for this blog) use it to refer to the process of testing the game.

Using Adobe Spark to Add Text to Images

A quick "tech project" that can sum up the learning or share good ideas is what some people call "infopics". Students simply add some text to a picture.

I've written about several tools that will let you do this easily. Now Adobe has released Spark, a creative tool that makes this (as well as some other digital creations) simple with very attractive results.

I created this video tutorial that shows the process.

There are Adobe Spark apps for iOS and Andorid as well. Each app creates one of the three project types the web app can create. This particular project is called the Post.

If you're interested in more resources about this image with text project, see my Project Pack about it here. The post with all my Project Packs can be found at this link.

Game Design Virtual Club - Part 4 - Making a prototype and testing it

Here's my fourth installment in my series of videos for the virtual club I'm running in Google Classroom. This time I talk about my favorite part of game design - making prototypes and testing them.

Most of the video is about making a quick, playable copy of the game. I only touch on the iterative process of testing, tweaking and playing some more.

Our school year is coming to a close, but if we get time my next video will be about creating a print-and-play version of a game.

Creating Narrated Slideshows and Digital Stories on a Chromebook Using Adobe Spark

One of the more popular tips and tutorials I've created has been how to create a narrated slideshow on a Chromebook. I used to use WeVideo for this, but last week Adobe released a tool called Spark. I was hoping it would be a simpler tool than WeVideo.

I tried out its features for importing images, adding narration and exporting the finished video and I'm happy to say it has worked very easily so far. I made a quick screen recording of the process so I could share it with teachers and students in my district.

This is new for all of us, but in case this helps others to get started with Spark, here's the video:

If you are interested in this post, you might also like my Tech Project Packs. Each one is a collection of resources for tech projects you can use in any class or subject.