Featured 6-16-2014: ParticiPoll

 

ParticiPoll is an audience polling add-in for PowerPoint that allows audience members to use their own devices to votes.

 

ParticiPoll is easy to use. With PowerPoint, create a slide with up to six answer choices. Use the ParticiPoll menu to set options, then click ‘Insert Poll’ and a results bar will appear on the slide. Press the ‘Start Polling” button, log in, and run your presentation.

 

Direct your audience to your assigned URL to vote and see the live vote count. When all votes are in advance your presentation to see the poll results.

 

 

Features of ParticiPoll:

• Clicker-free system that uses your audience members' devices
• Simple to install PowerPoint add-in
• Drop polls straight into your slides without telling ParticiPoll the questions and answers
• View and download historic poll data and anonymous comments (Pro version)

 

 See a video overview of ParticiPoll

 

ParticiPoll is free to use for unlimited live audience polling in PowerPoint. To access audience comments, historic charts, and to download results data you’ll need to purchase the Pro version at £2.99 (about $5 US) per month or £29.99 ($50 US) for a whole year.

 

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Featured 5-12-2014: EverySlide

 

EverySlide involves students by making it possible to integrate open-ended questions and polls in the same slides you are already using.

 

A free EverySlide educator license can make your classroom more interactive:

• Re-use existing slides
• More engaged students
• Know what students are thinking
• Generate class reports
• Instant polls and word clouds
• Students use their own devices

Upload a presentation created in PowerPoint or Keynote to EverySlide and press ‘present'. A unique registration link will be generated that your class can use to join your slideshow using any device they happen to have.

 

 

Ask a question or run an instant poll. After the presentation, you can review students’ interactions online or download their details and answers as a spreadsheet. You can leave a copy of your slides on participants’ devices.

 

 Watch an overview of EverySlide

 

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Featured 5-1-2014: Pear Deck

Pear Deck makes it easy to plan and build interactive lessons that promote active learning in the classroom. Real-time data provides teachers the feedback needed to make on-the-fly adaptations.

 

Create a new Pear Deck from Google Drive then use the editor to quickly create any of four kinds of slides: static, multiple choice, Draggable™, or free response. You can also import slides from most presentation software, such as Powerpoint or Keynote, as a PDF.

 

 

Once your Pear Deck is built, launch a unique presentation session directly from the editor to your students using your Google Apps for Education domain. Pear Deck’s Google Chrome extension lets you launch the presentation on their devices with no cooperation required.

 

 

Students follow along on their devices and respond to the unique question types when prompted. As the teacher, your device can isolate individual or groups of answers to put on the interactive whiteboard for further discussion or review.

 

 See how to present a Pear Deck

 

Pear Deck is currently in limited beta. They are looking for schools that:

• Use Google Apps for Education
• Use or are evaluating Chromebooks
• Are driven to fostering an environment of active learning
• Are driven to increase and improve formative assessments and data-driven instruction

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Featured 4-10-2014: Slidedocs

A Slidedoc is a visual document, developed in presentation software, that is intended to be read and referenced by individuals rather than projected on a screen before a group.

 

Slidedocs combine visual communications with short nuggets of written text. This results in a product that can be digested more easily and quickly than either a standard document or a full scale presentation.

 

Slidedocs are intended to be distributed and read on screens or printed for individual use without a presenter and as such could be very useful in a flipped classroom. Their easily browsable nature makes them useful as pre-read, reference, and leave-behind materials.

 

 

Your ideas can be easily integrated into other uses because of the modular design of a Slidedoc.

 

 View the Guide to Slidedocs which is itself a Slidedoc

 

Free templates will give you a headstart creating Slidedocs. Included with the download of the Slidedocs file are two PowerPoint-ready Slidedoc templates featuring easy-to-use master templates; simple, intuitive layouts; and beautiful, professional design.

 

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Extra 2-28-2014: Kingsoft Office for iOS

In October of last year, I shared Kingsoft Office Free 2013,  a no-cost, powerful  Windows alternative to MS Office. Earlier this month, Kingsoft Office released an iOS compatible with for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Kingsoft Office is compatible with and allows you to read and edit Word and PowerPoint documents and has the capability to view Excel files.

 

Kingsoft Office can sync with popular cloud services such as GoogleDrive, Dropbox, and others; transfer documents to other Kingsoft users over Wi-Fi; sync documents opened to your account from either your device or desktop without using any cable connection. File management allows creating folders, copy, move, delete, rename, and save as.

 

 

Kingsoft Office is free from the iTunes App Store. It requires iOS 6.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

 

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Featured: 1-20-2014 Haiku Deck

Haiku Deck is a free iPad app that offers a simple new way to create inspired presentations for teaching a lesson or telling a story.

Intuitive touch controls let Haiku Deck users create, edit, and share presentations right on their iPads. Bold, clear visuals have been optimized for mobile displays. Haiku Decks can also be edited online in a browser and synched to your iPad.

 

Haiku Deck features: 

• Choose from a range of stylish, professionally designed themes.
• Multiline text layouts and font color choices for flexibility and variety.
• Powerful image search puts millions of images at your fingertips.
• Create beautiful pie charts, bar charts, and stat charts.
• Streamlined numbered and bulleted list templates.
• Import, crop, and reposition images from your iPad, Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Picasa.

In-app Public Notes lets you add context, supporting detail, and links to easily create a PDF handout or round out your slide content online. Capture talking points or a script with Private Notes.

 

 

View or present Haiku Decks with an iPad, a projector, a smartphone, or any web browser. Export to PowerPoint, Keynote, or PDF. Share decks via email, Twitter, Facebook, or embed in your blog or website.

  

 Watch an introduction to Haiku Deck
 

Haiku Deck is also available in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese. iOS 6.0 or later is required.
  

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Featured: 6-17-2013 Kingsoft Office Free

Kingsoft Office Free 2013 for Windows provides a no-cost, powerful alternative to the MS Office monolith.

Smaller and faster than most other office suites, Kingsoft Office Free 2013, includes a built-in PDF converter and automatic spell check, as well as an innovative Paragraph Adjustment tool.

Kingsoft Office Free 2013 includes the usual modules for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations:

• Writer provides word and text processing with drag-and-drop paragraph editing, a section tab, support for .doc and .docx.
• Easily create and edit Spreadsheets, a calculator, graphing, and multiple other tools for complex data analysis, export to both .xls and .xlsx extension files.
• Presentation lets you create dynamic slides for speeches and presentations, with Flash, sound and animation effects, and artistic backgrounds.

 Watch a video introduction to Kingsoft Office

In addition to the traditional interface which resembles older versions of MS Office, Kingsoft Office Free 2013 gives you a choice of a new interface similar to the newer versions of Office. You can easily switch between the two versions according to your preference.

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Featured: 6-3-2013 Empressr

Empressr is a free online visual storytelling and presentation application that lets you create, manage, and share rich media presentations.

You can upload your own media such as video, audio, images, and animations to your Empressr media library, import them directly from other sites like Flickr, Google, and Photobucket, or link to digital content from elsewhere on the web.

Empressr supports many popular file formats, including: jpg, gif, bmp, png, mov, flv, avi, swf, and mp3. The size of uploaded items is limited to 10MB.

You can upload a PowerPoint file to Empressr and use each of its slides as a picture or use it as a fully editable presentation (with some loss, however).

Your presentations can be shared in several ways. You can make a presentation public on the Empressr site, email the link, use the share button to get an embed code, or choose to auto-embed into a number of social network sites like Facebook, Blogger, or WordPress, or place it on your own site. 

 Watch an Empressr tutorial

The Empressr team is located in New York and San Francisco. Empressr was developed to give users the ability to include more dynamic content like streaming video and Flash in presentations.

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Featured: 4-22-2013 SlideShark [Presenting]

SlideShark is a free app that enables you to show PowerPoint presentations from the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch the way they were intended to be seen, with animations, fonts, graphics, hyperlinks, and videos intact.

SlideShark is easy to use. Simply download your slides to the app and then tap to play your presentation from your iOS device. Show your slides from the device or connect to a projector.

Key features of SlideShark:

• 100 MB of online storage free.

• File management with your own secure, cloud-based account.

• Offline access to presentations.

• iPhone remote control and laser pointer capabilities when projecting from your iPad.

• Presenter Mode – see your slide notes, timers, animation counter, and next/previous slides.

You can broadcast your slides in real time to remote or on-site viewers. Broadcasting lets you present your slides from your device via a web link. Since your slides can be seen using a web browser, people can see your presentation from any Internet-connected device. Note: After June 1, this feature will only be available in SlideShark Pro and Team Edition.

Watch a video introduction to SlideShark

After the presentation, SlideShark lets you share an online version of your slides and track your audience's viewing behavior.

I have recently posted about two similar products: ElectricSlide | Presefy

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Featured: 4-15-2013 Presefy [Presenting]

Presefy is a just-out-of-beta web service which allows you to store and control your presentations anywhere you are. All your presentations are available and can be controlled via an Internet connection. 

You can broadcast and control your presentation using any web-capable mobile device. Presefy lets you use a smartphone or a tablet to stay in charge of the presentation, jump to any slide with ease, and more. Your audience can follow your presentation in their own browser, or a computer connected to a projector can serve to broadcast the presentation.

Store and share presentations securely in the Presefy cloud.  Presentations are ready to be presented anytime, anywhere. The basic plan limits you to having two presentations stored at any one time.

At the moment Presefy supports PPT, PPTx, and PDF. Presefy is designed with HTML5 so it is compatible with all platforms without any setup. There is nothing to download or install.

 Watch the video: Presefy - Go Mobile with your Presentations

The basic version of Presefy is free.  A Pro plan that will allow the storage of up to 20 presentations and other additional features is under development. 

Recently I posted here about a similar service, ElectricSlide, which is iOS app-based, whereas Presefy is browser-based and platform independent.

Note: I my trials of Presefy, I found that slides are presented in their entirety without support for builds and transitions. Also, there seemed to be an issue with images being cropped.

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Featured: 3/25/2013 Electric Slide [Presenting]

Electric Slide is a free iOS app that lets you wirelessly present your PowerPoint slides, documents, and videos with just your iPhone or iPad.

Show your PowerPoint files and other documents on any web browser, TV, or projector and control it using your device. Since viewers just need your simple Electric Slide URL to follow along, no complicated setup.

How Electric Slide works:

1. Upload files either from your device or via the web

2. Present to the meeting room TV or remote viewers - just provide your simple URL

3. You can also plug directly into a TV or use AirPlay

Even without a live Internet connection, you can present to a TV, projector, Apple TV, or another iOS device.

Electric Slide preserves your PowerPoint transitions, builds, animations, fonts, and formatting, both on your iPhone or iPad as well as any web browser. Many other formats, including Word, PDF, and videos are also supported.

A free Electric Slide account includes:

• 50 Mb storage

• Up to 5 simultaneous live viewers

• Videos up to 60 seconds in length

• Meeting length limited to 90 minutes

• Doesn't expire

Watch a video introduction to Electric Slide

Oddly, Electric Slide does not currently support Keynote presentations. However, I am told this feature is in development. Electric Slide is free from the iTunes App Store.

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Featured: 12/20/2012 rvl.io [Presentations]

Create and deliver beautiful presentations, easily and quickly, right in your browser with rvl.io.



Easy editing of your presentations is the hallmark feature of rvl.io. The editor is easy to use, applying presentation styles to the slides as you edit them, so you'll know exactly what you're getting. Presentations are HTML documents so you can always tweak the markup yourself using the HTML editor.



Make sure things appear the way you want them with a wide range of themes and transitions to pick from. By default, your presentations are private, only you can see them. You can chose to publish your work which makes it openly available.

See a video demo of rvl.io

rvl.io resentations can be viewed in any modern browser, including mobile. Touch-optimised presentations are delivered to touch devices.

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This is the last feature post of 2012. Feature posts will resume on Monday, January 7, 2013. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

COD - 11/1/2012 Doceri [iPad Whiteboard]

A special series of posts this week is featuring four iPad apps that can help you use your iPad effectively with an interactive whiteboard. Today's featured app is Doceri.

Doceri for iPad combines screencasting, desktop control, and an interactive whiteboard in one app. Create hand written or drawn projects on your iPad, using sophisticated drawing tools and the innovative Doceri Timeline.

Doceri allows you to backtrack to edit a drawing stroke, an inserted photo, or a hand drawn object at any time. Create, edit, replay, and refine your hand drawn or annotated presentation before you record, or record live during your presentation. Add an audio voice over as you record, or do it later.

When connected using wi-fi or an ad hoc wireless connection to your Mac or PC, you can access and control your desktop using Doceri on the iPad with the Doceri Desktop software on your computer. (You can present without Doceri Desktop via Airplay.)

Connect your Mac or PC to a projector and present anything from your iPad via the desktop software. Doceri’s one touch controls make it easy to control and annotate right on top of your Keynote or PowerPoint presentations, and save it as a Doceri project for future use. 

Still image captures, multi-page PDFs, or audio/video screencasts can be shared by email, iTunes, YouTube, or Facebook. Saving to the Camera Roll lets you share to any service you can connect to from your iPad or computer. 

Watch a video overview of Doceri

The free trial version of Doceri adds a watermark to the images, PDFs, and screencast videos that you share. To remove this watermark requires an in app purchase for $4.99 (USD). Requires iOS 5.0 or later.

>Similar apps you might want to check out:
Whiteboard Lite: Collaborative Drawing (free)
ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard (free)
Splashtop Whiteboard ($19.99)
Jot! Whiteboard Free (free)

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