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Tuesday, January 7, 2014

BlendSpace: A great interactive presentation tool

Blendspace, formerly Educanvas, is one of my new favorite presentation platforms.  Next to Prezi, which I can embed in the Blendspace, this makes presentations incrementally more engaging!

Participants will need to login to participate in a presentation, but fear not!  You can use your Google Account to login which is perfect for all the GAfE Schools out there!
The interface is beautiful!  You can choose varied layouts, be colorful and sequence your presentation the way you want it!  Here's what's awesome about the layout:  Not only can the participant play the slideshow in the order you sequence, they can also from the layout view, choose their own order!  Perfect for blended or flipped classes.  You can Share the link, Collaborate on a presentation, Embed it and even create a QR Code!


It's FREE for Educators!  This is always a plus, right?  There is an upgraded version that has a cost associated and it is not a prohibitive cost even for a tight budget. 

I recently started using it and pictured in this post is a Student Assembly where I used Socrative to collect LIVE feedback during a Digital Citzenship Assembly.  The Blendspace layout had everything I needed within it.  I could jump from a Blendspace slide to a YouTube video to a short Prezi and back to Blendspace without changing screens.  The only time I had to toggle to a new window was to view the Socrative feedback!  Now, if only Blendspace had a question feature like Socrative...

Oh Wait!  They do!  I had reasons for using both applications in the assembly and could just as easily have built in a Quiz slide sequentially throughout the presentation and reviewed LIVE results!

It's a lot of information about a presentation tool and I haven't even covered it all.  There's even more functionality built in to Blendspace to make it a versatile interactive presentation tool for all kinds of instructional scenarios.

Check it out!  www.blendspace.com