Dan, Qaixen Consultant, introduces us to Microsoft Sway and how this little known tool can benefit teachers and students in a learning environment in his latest blog:
Can I per sway you?
The phrase “Death by PowerPoint” often gets used within education settings due to (some might say) the overuse of Microsoft PowerPoint. Don’t get me wrong, slideshow presentations have their place but often lack the interactive engagement that learners, especially younger learners, need. This month, we are going to be looking at the benefits of Microsoft Sway and how it can contribute to a learning environment.
What is Microsoft Sway?
Microsoft Sway is a little utilised but powerful tool for creating interactive and engaging presentations. This cloud based app can help you create dynamic presentations without the need for a presenter. Using a variety of out-of-the-box templates or by creating your own, you can deliver information in a highly visual way. Slides can be presented vertically, horizontally or like a more traditional slide show. Where Sway differs from PowerPoint is that it enables you to easily add images, text and videos, by taking it straight from the web or by uploading them from OneDrive. Therefore, this negates the need to embed links into slides and allows your content to be far more dynamic. Sway also allows you to work collaboratively in real time, online, which is ideal for group activities and projects. You can invite others to work on the same document by sharing it, allowing students to work together and teachers to assess what is being completed in real time (whilst also monitoring what is being produced and that everyone is on task).
How can Microsoft Sway be used effectively in an education setting?
Engagement of your education stakeholders is often a key area of development for schools and other educational institutions. Many schools create a monthly or weekly newsletter that is sent to parents or students, yet how many of these letters are read? If printed, they are often left scrunched up at the bottom of a child’s bag under the decaying remains of last Wednesday’s break time snack! Sadly, this is often the fate of the printed newsletter, but with Sway, important information or achievements can be given context and made much visually appealing.
Imagine the scenario: Tickets for the latest Drama Department’s production are going to become available to buy, but instead of sending out a standard newsletter, why not create the announcement within Sway? Add a video from last year’s performance, along with a gallery of images from this year’s rehearsals. Reviews of the performance could also be embedded within Sway, beside audio clips from the staff who have had early access to watch the show. Finally, a link to the school’s site where you can buy the tickets to watch this (award-winning) spectacle.
Bringing the curriculum to life with Microsoft Sway
Creating an engaging and collaborative curriculum is where Sway really comes to life. For example, a class teacher may wish to set a task about whether or not the Roman invasion of Britain was a beneficial to native Britons. Traditionally, this would have meant creating a project book or slideshow presentation, with one child in the group potentially taking over and dominating the project. As Sway allows for online collaboration, classrooms with one-to-one devices can allow everyone to take an active role in an assignment. One child could research and add relevant information. Another could bring online content such as video clips or links to important documents. Children could even create their own historical documentaries which they could film and add to their Sway project. Using Sway would also give staff an opportunity to explore e-safety elements of the curriculum, which often get overlooked, such as copyright and plagiarism. Understanding these concepts is difficult for adults, let alone children, so having a practical tool to help explore this is indispensable. Learning doesn’t have to end when the work is complete however, as the completed Sway project could be shared with parents, students or even with public bodies (like museums for example). By doing this, you can really add context and real-world applications to what could have been a much less engaging and inspiring task.
Get started with Sway
These examples of how to maximise the use of Sway within an educational setting are just the start. The potential for engaging visual and interactive presentations and displays is only limited by your imagination. From interactive museum displays to weekly newsletters, anything is possible with Sway.
Here at Qaixen, we offer a range of Microsoft 365 services for teachers to help drive adoption and increase understanding of all the cloud apps, including Microsoft Sway. If you would like to learn more about how Qaixen can help your school, Multi Academy Trust, college or university adopt Microsoft Sway, simply contact us.