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7 alternative presentation tools for classroom use.

To learn about more alternatives to the typical presentation, check out this on-demand training video,  Alternatives to Slide Presentations – Free Tools for Student Projects . Join technology trainer Lauren Boucher as she introduces free tools for student projects that go beyond the slide show. In addition to sharing the free tools, Lauren provides project ideas and classroom tips that can be used across curriculum and grade levels.

Which of these tools are you planning on using first? Let us know how you like to present information in your classroom — please leave a comment on this article below.

Kimber Thompson is a Lead Moderator for SimpleK12 webinars and a Contributing Editor for SimpleK12.com. She writes frequently about education topics, and is passionate about tools and techniques that inspire young learners. You may reach her with ideas and comments at [email protected] .

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20 Digital Tools for Classroom for Innovative Teachers & Students

Digital tools for making infographics, presentations, videos, animations, as well as tools for assessments, quizzes, and more.

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By Iveta Pavlova

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Updated April 21, 2022

In the world we live in, technology is literally everywhere and the kids adapt to it more than anyone else. Unlike teachers, students are being raised in a digital world. It is absolutely natural for students of all ages to use technology in every aspect of their lives. This is why digital tools in classroom are becoming more and more crucial. Traditional methods for teaching are already going through a transformation to adapt to the needs of 21st-century students and to enhance the professional practice of teachers. The digital future is literally happening now.

Using technology for education provokes students’ curiosity, boosts their engagement, and leads to better learning and comprehension. These factors are a priority for every effective teacher and today they can be easily achieved by using digital tools in classroom. We’ve selected 20 innovative digital tools for classroom which foster responsibility, relationships, and respect, and can be used by educators and students.

Do you want to check out The Best Online Learning Platforms in 2022 ?

Article overview:

• suitable for students of all ages
• suitable for teachers

Prezi is a digital software for creating interactive presentations. According to their research, the innovative way Prezi helps you make presentations – by zooming, leads to more effective, more persuasive, more effective, and more engaging presentations than presentations made with PowerPoint. If you are still unaware of what you can do with the software, we strongly recommend that you check it out and present it to your students. Who knows, maybe this would be one of the digital tools for classroom that would help you keep the attention of the kids.

Here is a useful tutorial that will help you get the hang of the software:

2. Haiku Deck

• suitable for students and teachers

A digital tool with whose help you can easily make presentations on your iPad, iPhone, and the web. The tool works online and offers a huge database of stock photos with which you can create image-based slides. Haiku Deck makes it easy to create presentations on the go and literally carry them in your pocket. Haiku Deck can be also integrated into Google Classroom which has been very popular lately. See a quick video of how Haiku Deck makes presentations fun and easy:

• for students primarily between 8 and 16 years old

Although mainly purposed for students, Scratch can be used by people of all ages. This digital tool lets students create engaging projects like games, animations, interactive art, stories and more. If your students have an interest in making programs, Scratch is definitely one of the digital tools for classroom you have to introduce them to. This program would give the little ones a brilliant start to make them think in an innovative and creative way. If you wonder how to help them start, here is a video tutorial “Make Your First Program” with Scratch:

Video is one of the most engaging mediums of the modern-da society which is why you should definitely incorporate it into your classroom. Animoto is one of the digital tools for classroom that can be used by both teachers and students for educational purposes. Animoto helps you create animated videos easily. You can create photo slideshows, stitch various videos together, and add text and more images to come up with a truly engaging video in the end. Check out this video tutorial before starting your first Animoto video:

Why make students write a story when they can draw it for a change? Digital tools for classroom like Pixton boost the children’s visual thinking and creativity while it engages them to the fullest. This tool allows little and big students to make comics and storyboards. This activity can be both educational and fun. If you are an educator, you can try Pixton for free before introducing it to your kids. A perfect tool to boost the students’ imagination! See how it works:

6. BoomWriter

7. Explain Everything

• suitable for educators and upper-class students

Explain Everything is all about interaction in a virtual environment. This digital tool allows students and teachers to collaborate on an interactive whiteboard thus encouraging group activities. This software can also be integrated with Schoolwork, Dropbox, Evernote, GDrive, OneDrive, and more useful apps. With the drag-and-drop options, Explain Everything is super easy and intuitive to work with. See how you can get started and how collaboration works via the following video:

You may also be interested in GraphicMama’s Free Coloring Book: 60+ Coloring Pages (Free Printable PDF)

8. Educreations

9. Glogster

Glogster is one of the amazing digital tools for classroom which helps children learn by using visual content. This app allows you to create multimedia posters by combining text information, photos, and videos. The creations are called glogs and stored in a special library called Glogpedia. Containing over 40 thousand different glogs on various subjects and topics, this tool can become one of your most trusted tools for teaching children effectively. Learn more in the video below.

10. Flipsnack

• suitable for students and educators

• suitable for the whole class to use

Padlet is a digital pinboard that allows participants (students and teachers) contribute by pinning different images, videos, text files, links, and more. Digital tools for classroom like Padlet motivate students to work together and brainstorm like a team. You can customize the background to a corkboard, blackboard, wood, sand, and many more options, the layout to a grid, stream, or freeform, as well as control who has access to the board. Here is a tutorial you can check out:

12. VoiceThread

• suitable for K-12 students

13. StoryJumper

14. Storybird

• suitable for K-9 students

15. Quizlet

16. Socrative

• for educators

• for students, teachers, and parents

Edmodo is an Education Network that teachers, students, and parents can join. Edmodo provides a digital classroom environment and gives you access to many resources. At first sight, it pretty much looks like the social media networks we know, so you will intuitively understand what, where, and how to join groups and communities, and collaborate with other users in the network. Edmodo gives you the opportunity to create a digital classroom where you can invite your students and even start sending digital assignments. Check out this explainer video to learn more about the Edmodo education network:

18. Schoology

Schoology is a learning management system that is free to use and it allows teachers to create and distribute materials, give assessments, track progress, etc. Basically, with Schoology, you can do everything that you do in Google Classroom , plus more features. You can organize content much more easily, embed multimedia within the assignment description, record audio or video within the platform, have a grade book, set completing rules, and many more. Check out an introduction video below.

19. Piktochart

One of the great digital tools for classroom which provides educators and students with tools to create infographics, presentations, reports, and more visual content materials. Visme provides all kinds of templates and graphic resources to help visualize any kind of data or assignment. You can insert videos, make animations, insert links, etc. Check out the following to see what you can do with Visme.

     

Technology is a friend of education and there is no reason to fight this trend. Right on the contrary, by incorporating digital tools in classroom, you become an effective school leader who fosters innovation.

Here, at GraphicMama, we support educators with innovative thinking who encourage students to learn and develop. This is why we create cartoon characters that are great for educational purposes and can be used in many ways: in digital tools for making infographics, creating presentations, video making, and animations, as well as all kinds of tools for conveying visual concepts and ideas.

We hope we’ve been helpful. If you can think of other useful digital tools for classroom or more ways to use cartoon characters for digital education, we can’t wait to see your thoughts in the comments below. See ya!

You may also be interested in these related articles:

• The Best Online Graphic Makers with School-Related Design Templates
• 5 Great Ways to Teach Creativity & Make Learning Effective

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Iveta is a passionate writer at GraphicMama who has been writing for the brand ever since the blog was launched. She keeps her focus on inspiring people and giving insight on topics like graphic design, illustrations, education, business, marketing, and more.

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20 Collaborative Tools for Your Classroom That Are NOT Google

January 31, 2023 by Kasey Bell

Collaboration is a critical twenty-first-century skill for our students. Finding ways to facilitate and support collaboration in the classroom is not always easy.

Keep in mind that digital tools are not inherently collaborative, it is how you use them to facilitate collaboration in your classroom.

All of the tools below have the capability but may support collaboration in different ways.

I’ve included an overview video for each of the fifteen tools listed below.

Many of these tools also tap into other C’s like creativity, critical thinking, and communication! (Looking for other ideas to support the 4 C’s, check out the 4 C’s Learning Menu .)

Another important thing to note is that many of these tools work together, like InsertLearning and Flip, as well as offer integration with Google tools.

Did your favorites make the list? If not, leave a comment and share your top collaboration!

This post contains 20 collaborative tools for your classroom that are NOT Google.

Listen to the episodes:

This episode is sponsored by Konica-Minolta.

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in no particular order…

1. Pear Deck

Pear Deck is an active learning and formative assessment tool that makes your presentations completely interactive! Pear Deck is fully loaded with templates for each stage of the assessment process, vocabulary games, Google tool integration, and helps teachers engage students and create collaborative conversations.

Pear Deck also offers ISTE Aligned, digital citizenship curriculum in partnership with Google’s, “ Be Internet Awesome ,” program. And Pear Deck has also introduced critical thinking slides !

Pear Deck is a freemium tool, meaning that some features are completely free, but premium features require a paid account.

Related: 27 Formative Assessment Tools for Your Classroom

Learn more about Pear Deck.

Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion tool that allows teachers to create “grids,” of discussion topics. Students share their responses through recorded videos. Flip is a great way to encourage student voice and engage students. You can also connect and collaborate globally through their #GridPals program.

Flip is jam-packed with a ton of other features like video downloads, stickers & drawings, custom assessment rubrics, video feedback, MixTapes, Topic invites, private share links, Vibes, and more! There is also an amazing community to support you!

Flipgrid is owned by Microsoft and is completely free!

Learn more about Flipgrid.

Related: Flipgrid: The Go-To Remote Learning Tool

Related: 10 Awesome Ways to Use Flipgrid in the Classroom

Padlet is a digital tool that allows you to create collaborative “walls.” I like to think of it like a digital bulletin board with digital sticky notes, but way better. Students can post just about anything–images, videos, documents, and text–from anywhere, and from any device (pcs, tablets, phones).

I have used Padlet for many years and it is a great way to get students (and teachers) sharing, collaborating, and creating. Padlet is no longer a free tool, but it is still used and recommended by many teachers.

Learn more about Padlet .

Nearpod is an interactive presentation and assessment tool. Teachers can use it to create interactive lessons that contain quizzes, polls, videos, images, drawing-boards, web content and more, as well as use their “Nearpod Collaborate!” tool.

Nearpod is free for a class size up to 30.

Learn more about Nearpod.

5. Microsoft Teams

Get Classes, Meetings, Assignments, Files And Collaboration All In One Place With Teams.

Engage students with virtual face-to-face connections and activities, or set up a remote lunch to keep classrooms connected and having fun and it’s free for students and teachers with a valid school email address.

Learn more about Microsoft Teams .

Seesaw is a student-driven digital portfolio tool. Teachers can empower students to create, reflect, share, and collaborate. Students “show what they know” using photos, videos, drawings, text, PDFs, and links.

Seesaw is a freemium tool, meaning that some features are completely free, but premium features require a paid account.

Learn more about Seesaw.

Kahoot! is a game-based learning and trivia platform for your classroom. Teachers can create Kahoots, or collaboratively create with students.

Kahoot is free for teachers.

Learn more about Kahoot.

8. Book Creator

Book Creator is the simple way to make ebooks using the Chrome App or iOS App. Book Creator has real-time collaboration and is ideal for making all kinds of books, portfolios, comic books, photo books, journals, textbooks and more.

Book Creator is free for up to 40 books.

Learn more about Book Creator. 

9.  Cospaces Edu

CoSpaces Edu is an application that allows students and teachers to easily build their own 3D creations, animate them with code and explore them in Virtual or Augmented Reality.

CoSpaces is free for up to 30 seats.

Learn more about CoSpaces. 

Buncee allows students and teachers to create engaging multimedia projects and presentations.

Buncee is a freemium tool, meaning that some features are completely free, but premium features require a paid account.

Learn more about Buncee.

11. OneNote

OneNote is a Microsoft Office product that is like a digital version of a physical notebook. This means you can capture digital notes and keep them organized, as well as collaborate and share. It also means you can add images, diagrams, audio, video, and more.

Access to OneNote requires an Office 365 subscription.

Learn more about OneNote.

12. WeVideo

WeVideo is an online and collaborative video editing tool. Students can easily edit and collaborate on videos on desktops, iOS, and Android. And, it’s Chromebook compatible!

WeVideo is a freemium tool, meaning that some features are completely free, but premium features require a paid account.

Learn more about WeVideo.

13. Classcraft

Classcraft is a game-based approach to teaching and behavior management. It’s designed to encourage participation, good behavior, and 21st-century skills like collaboration.

Learn more about Classcraft.

14. InsertLearning

InsertLearning is a Chrome extension that lets you turn any website into an interactive lesson. You can highlight text, add sticky notes, insert questions, videos, or even a discussion all inside the webpage!

Learn more by reading 4 Ways to Blend Learning with InsertLearning .

This tool was also part of the 18 Challenges for Teachers in 2018 FREE ebook .

Teachers can create up to 5 lessons with a FREE account.

Learn more about InsertLearning.

15. Soundtrap Edu

Soundtrap Edu is an online music studio where students can create together by recording and using loops.

Learn more about Soundtrap Edu.

16. Lumio by Smart

Lumio is a digital learning tool that will transform your lessons into active, collaborative learning experiences. Every day more schools and districts are switching to Lumio – it’s truly a flexible, time-saving tool that makes it easy to turn your PDFs, Google Slides, PowerPoint, and Notebook files into engaging lessons with interactive activities, games, group workspaces, and formative assessment ALL built right in.

*Related:  Engaging Lessons for Next-Gen Connected Creators

17. Canva for Education

Canva for Education is 100% free for K-12 (primary and secondary) teachers and their students, powering creation and collaboration in every classroom.

You and your students can create and personalize your own designs from scratch, or choose from thousands of high-quality, educational templates. From presentations to posters, and infographics, to worksheets, project-based learning, and lesson plans, the possibilities are endless.

*Related:  4+ Things You Didn’t Know Canva Could Do!

18. Bookwidgets

Transform your old worksheets into interactive quizzes and assignments rich with multimedia. With BookWidgets, all teachers from all courses can create interactive exercises and auto-graded assignments with over 30 different question types. Teachers can easily integrate BookWidgets inside their trusted learning environment (Google Classroom, Teams, Canvas, Schoology, and more). The integration allows you to follow student progress in realtime when student are working on a BookWidgets assignment. This way, you can quickly guide your students in the right direction when they need help.

*Related:  Google Classroom + BookWidgets = Superpowered Digital Classroom  

19. Wakelet

Save, organize and share content from across the web with Wakelet. Save articles, videos, images, Tweets and more, organize them into stunning collections.

20. Notion for Education

Your notes, research, tasks, and more — all in one place. Free for students and teachers, with discounts for teams and schools.

Did your favorite collaborative tool make the list? If not, leave a comment and share!

© Shake Up Learning 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

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It’s important for teachers to master the art of presenting engaging lectures that keep kids interested in the material as the weeks wear on. However, it’s equally important for students to master the same trade. As kids progress through school, higher education and, eventually, their professional lives, they’ll need tools besides PowerPoint to effectively pitch ideas and communicate dense material to seminars of bored classmates.

We’re breaking down 8 must-have presentation apps to help both teachers and students find their inner aesthetic and create drool-proof, prize-winning presentations.

• Eiki International, Inc .: Not all classroom projectors are created equal. Some may be user-friendly, but lower in quality, while others show crystal clear images, but prove difficult to operate. One thing that teachers should never have to jeopardize is quality, and one thing they absolutely can’t afford to waste is time! That’s why Eiki International Inc.’s EK-100W “Entry” Series Projector is the perfect classroom companion for teachers: great picture, easy functionality, plus it’s equipped with Eiki’s revolutionary 10,000 hour lamp technology. You can display HD video from your smartphone or tablet and it accepts composite, component and S-Video in all major standards.
• Board Builder : Board Builder acts like a digital poster board that allows teachers and students to begin with a blank canvas and personalize presentations. Customize backgrounds, add imagery, video clips, documents, change fonts, and tie everything together with built-in color schemes that keep slides both engaging and aesthetically pleasing.
• Emaze : With everything that teachers have on their plates – from lesson plans to addressing behavioral problems to making sure struggling students receive extra help – it’s understandable that there’s little time left to customize every presentation. Emaze is an easy , user-friendly presentation app that allows creators to plug in lesson information and aesthetic preferences and watch as built-in templates take over. Choose from learning aids, 3D imagery, transitions, and presentation formats that look professionally crafted. The software is also cloud-based, so Emaze presentations can be edited from any device online.
• Powtoon : Ask any marketing professional how to capture the attention of millennials, and they’ll say video Start thinking of your students like consumers who have hours and hours of advertisement thrown at them every second because, with a smartphone in reach, it’s true that students have content they’d rather be focusing on. It’s your job to grab their attention and, like the best marketing strategists, create custom videos. Powtoon allows users to create animated videos that grab everyone’s immediate attention easily. When was the last time your kids watched a personalized, animated video outlining photosynthesis?
• Educreations : In the same video vein, Educreations is an interactive white board that captures a teacher’s voice and handwriting to create shareable video lessons. Educreations is perfect for struggling students who like going through the material with teachers one-on-one, but still, need refreshers after the review session ends. Educreations records the session and lets students replay the video afterward to review every detail of their personalized instruction.
• Prezi : Prezi is a free tool that takes PowerPoints to the next level. If you’re in a rush, you can import previously created PowerPoints into Prezi and watch as your once plain presentation gets new movement and flare. Otherwise, Prezi lets you create a unique presentation from scratch. Zoom in on images, zoom out to reveal larger backgrounds for dramatic effect, easily incorporate audio components, and choose from endless themes. If you’re struggling for inspiration, Prezi offers suggestions and interesting tools that help boost even the most boring series of slides.
• ClickShare : Is your classroom prone to technical troubles? No IT professional on site? ClickShare is a wireless presentation and collaboration tool that projects slides from any device with the touch of a button. Connecting slides to projectors is so easy that a glitch will never delay the start of a presentation in your classroom again. ClickShare also fosters collaboration, letting multiple students and teachers work together on different accounts. If you want to be there while students master the art of presentations, monitor their progress and provide input when students begin struggling.
• DyKnow : DyKnow allows teachers to create SMART boards from any ordinary whiteboard. The tool opens like PowerPoint and allows teachers to write on computers using special pens while projecting the presentation to students in real time. Students can view presentations on their personal devices and, to be sure students are actually watching, teachers have the power to block websites so students can only access presentations. Have students out sick? Save presentations to a server and kids can access them anytime, anywhere.

With the smartphone and tablet and VR phenomenon exploding from generation to generation, kids have more distractions than ever before. That means teachers today face an especially tough challenge in keeping kids’ attention towards their lesson plans and away from a separate screen sitting in backpacks and laps.

If students are bored with PowerPoint, Google Slides, and other generic presentation tools, WOW them with video, audio, and imagery that mirrors the content they spend hours watching on YouTube and Netflix. As teachers learn to master the art of engagement, kids will inevitably learn by example and begin creating powerhouse presentations of their own.

Disclosure: This preceding post was sponsored. We were compensated by the sponsoring company, and consider this to be an advertisement. However, we only endorse or recommend services or products that we think would be a good fit for our readership. We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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Best Classroom Tools for Presentations and Slideshows

Many students dread presenting or struggle to structure and communicate their ideas successfully. These interactive presentation and slideshow apps and websites give them tools to make their work fun, engaging, and interesting. Students can create screencasts to teach a topic to the class, use a design tool to craft sleek graphics, or record entertaining videos and animations. Whether it's for practice or to reach an authentic audience, students can demonstrate their learning and gain valuable skills for college and career. There are also some great options for teachers to create and present lessons with live whiteboard instruction or slick multimedia and interactive elements like videos or embedded assessments. 

Want to know what we think are the best interactive presentation tools? Check out The Best Interactive Presentation and Lesson Tools for Classrooms .

Slideshow and Lesson Delivery Tools

Flexible interactive presentation tool engages kids at school and home

Bottom Line : It's great for creating customized and differentiated lessons, but it might not be accessible for every student.

Engage and assess students with media, videos, and interactive slides

Bottom Line : The teacher- or student-paced learning can improve 1-to-1 environments and the learning activities are top notch.

User-friendly slideshow tool offers customization, promotes creativity

Bottom Line : The robust design and accessibility features make creating dynamic presentations a breeze.

Live presentation tool adds interactivity to stale slide decks

Bottom Line : This easy-to-use tool gets students more involved in presentations, but a lot of teachers might use similar tools already.

Interactive slideshows offer a variety of ways to engage and assess

Bottom Line : It’s an appealing platform that can improve formative assessment, particularly for teachers using Google Classroom.

Versatile polling/presentation tool boasts great question variety

Bottom Line : This tool supports student-centered teaching by pushing real-time participation/feedback beyond simple polls and multiple-choice questions.

Robust lesson creation and delivery tool aids assessment

Bottom Line : With some creativity, this interactive platform can support instruction and assessment.

Simple, elegant tool for creating presentations on mobile devices

Bottom Line : Provides a solid mobile version of Apple's presentation app.

Multimedia presentation tool features useful templates and 3D zoom

Bottom Line : With its zoom in and out capabilities, Prezi helps teachers and students go beyond traditional presentations to put important content front and center.

Limited text and high-impact visuals help focus presentations

Bottom Line : Haiku Deck doesn't teach the essentials of good presentations, but it's great for users who already know the basics.

Screencasting Tools

Create, present, and assess with effortless interactive screencasts

Bottom Line : This intuitive tool is excellent for recording and responding to screencasts of any length.

Screencast-O-Matic

Create and edit sophisticated screencasts without breaking the bank

Bottom Line : This is the most flexible screencasting tool, but it requires patience -- and perhaps a subscription -- to unlock all of its possibilities.

Screencastify

Easy screen-recording tool facilitates outside-the-box instruction

Bottom Line : This is an instructional tool that could reinvent classroom workflow, especially for classrooms in the Google ecosystem.

Create and edit high-quality screencasts and videos in record time

Bottom Line : This platform is full of features that blend video creation and screencasting, helping teachers expand and differentiate their lessons.

Simple, easy screencast creator with room to grow

Bottom Line : This is a competitive entrant into the screencasting field that leans into ease-of-use and fewer restrictions.

Shadow Puppet Edu

Resource-rich video slideshow maker a gem for a variety of classrooms

Bottom Line : Easy-to-use free tool is a must-have for elementary classrooms; just keep an eye on sharing and privacy.

TouchCast Studio

Cool tool takes videos to the next level

Bottom Line : It's a creative tool for teachers to make interactive video content and for students to present information, but teachers should monitor use.

Whiteboard Tools

Explain everything.

Create, record, and share videos with classic presentation tool

Bottom Line : With a paid subscription, a stellar suite of features that offer maximum flexibility without overwhelming users with too many options.

Interactive whiteboard lets users brainstorm, organize, and collaborate

Bottom Line : This beautiful and collaborative platform is useful for everything from workflow tasks to creative expression.

Related Content

A List of 20 Free Tools for Teachers to Create Awesome Presentations and Slideshows |

• Zaraki Kenpachi
• September 16, 2021

There are many tools available to help teachers create effective presentations and slideshows. These 20 free tools will make your next presentation a success!

The knovio is a list of 20 free tools for teachers to create awesome presentations and slideshows. It includes the following:

A selection of some of the finest free tools for instructors and students to make amazing slideshows and presentations is provided below.

Knovio is number one. Knovio breathes life into static slides, transforming them into rich video and audio presentations that you can share with friends and colleagues through email or major social networking platforms with a single click. Knovio is entirely web-based and does not need any program installation or download.

2- For instructors, Ahead Ahead is an excellent presenting tool. It works in such a manner that your layouts are immediately transformed into a zooming presentation. Check it out, it’s fantastic.

3- Greetings, Slide HelloSlide is a fantastic online application that enables users to make amazing presentations with audio narration.

4- The Jux Jux is one of the finest platforms for showcasing your work. You may use a URL or your hard drive to insert movies and pictures.

Slidestaxx #5 Slidestaxx is an excellent presentation software. It enables users to make stunning social media presentations. Slidestaxx now allows you to collect material from many sources and combine it into an interesting slideshow that you can embed in your blog, website, or wiki.

Present.me is number six. It enables users to utilize their cameras to record and share presentations.

PhotoPeach (n.d.) (n.d.) (n. PhotoPeach is a free web tool that lets you make multimedia slideshows. The fact that this application allows background music is one of my favorite features. When music is used in picture slideshows, they become much more interesting and presentable.

Slideboom (nine) Slideboom is a slide hosting service that allows you to save and share your presentations with the rest of the world.

9- Zentangle One of the finest video presentation tools is Zentation. It incorporates both movies and slides into presentations, resulting in compelling educational multimedia.

Slidesix (10) It allows users to share multimedia presentations via a sophisticated web-based application that allows them to “import presentation material and customize their message by narrating each slide with video or music.”

Zoho Show (#11)

It allows you to build dynamic presentations with basic but powerful features. It includes a number of characteristics that distinguish it from other presentation software.

12- Make a presentation It enables users to create remarkable presentations alone or with others, share them, and display them online. It’s a really useful tool for us to utilize with our kids.

Popplet (#13) Popplet is a one-of-a-kind web2.0 utility. It’s one of the finest apps for visual concepts. Presentations, mindmapping, and online bulletins are all part of it.

Prezi (#14) Prezi is a cloud-based presentation tool that bridges the gap between whiteboards and PowerPoint slides. It’s great to explore ideas with the zoomable canvas…

Canva is a free tool that allows users to create presentations and slideshows. It’s easy to use, has a ton of templates, and also includes an editor for text. Reference: canva.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do teachers use to make slideshows.

Teachers use a variety of software to create slideshows. This includes PowerPoint, Keynote, and Animoto.

What are the tools used to create a presentation?

The tools used to create a presentation can vary depending on the type of presentation that is being created. Some presentations may use PowerPoint, while others may use Keynote or Powerpoint.

What are the tools used by teachers?

Teachers use a variety of tools in their classrooms, but the most common are chalkboards, markers, paper, and pencils.

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Teaching Students About the Myths of Icarus

Jared burns, inside the fall of columbia university’s president, nemat shafik, 6 ways to set boundaries for better work-life balance, slower start to clearing, but a long way to go yet, aaup faces criticism for reversal on academic boycotts, australian voters ‘value international students’ as caps near, indiana will keep a version of the academic honors diploma after public outcry, supreme court, for now, blocks protections for transgender students in some states, 8 must-have classroom presentation apps and tools.

It’s important for teachers to master the art of presenting engaging lectures that keep kids interested in the material as the weeks wear on. However, it’s equally important for students to master the same trade. As kids progress through school, higher education and, eventually, their professional lives, they’ll need tools besides PowerPoint to effectively pitch ideas and communicate dense material to seminars of bored classmates.

We’re breaking down 8 must-have presentation apps to help both teachers and students find their inner aesthetic and create drool-proof, prize-winning presentations.

• Board Builder : Board Builder acts like a digital poster board that allows teachers and students to begin with a blank canvas and personalize presentations. Customize backgrounds, add imagery, video clips, documents, change fonts, and tie everything together with built-in color schemes that keep slides both engaging and aesthetically pleasing.
• Emaze : With everything that teachers have on their plates – from lesson plans to addressing behavioral problems to making sure struggling students receive extra help – it’s understandable that there’s little time left to customize every presentation. Emaze is an easy , user-friendly presentation app that allows creators to plug in lesson information and aesthetic preferences and watch as built-in templates take over. Choose from learning aids, 3D imagery, transitions, and presentation formats that look professionally crafted. The software is also cloud-based, so Emaze presentations can be edited from any device online.
• Powtoon : Ask any marketing professional how to capture the attention of millennials, and they’ll say video Start thinking of your students like consumers who have hours and hours of advertisement thrown at them every second because, with a smartphone in reach, it’s true that students have content they’d rather be focusing on. It’s your job to grab their attention and, like the best marketing strategists, create custom videos. Powtoon allows users to create animated videos that grab everyone’s immediate attention easily. When was the last time your kids watched a personalized, animated video outlining photosynthesis?
• Educreations : In the same video vein, Educreations is an interactive white board that captures a teacher’s voice and handwriting to create shareable video lessons. Educreations is perfect for struggling students who like going through the material with teachers one-on-one, but still, need refreshers after the review session ends. Educreations records the session and lets students replay the video afterward to review every detail of their personalized instruction.
• Haiku Deck : Another user-friendly tool is Haiku Deck. Haiku Deck includes thousands of templates that teachers and students can build from to create slides with fonts that coincide and color schemes that correlate. It’s almost impossible not to create something beautiful, neat and aesthetically pleasing. If you’re in need of charts but don’t have time to master Excel, Haiku Deck lets you pick from templates of different charts and customize them to mirror your own data.
• Prezi : Prezi is a free tool that takes PowerPoints to the next level. If you’re in a rush, you can import previously created PowerPoints into Prezi and watch as your once plain presentation gets new movement and flare. Otherwise, Prezi lets you create a unique presentation from scratch. Zoom in on images, zoom out to reveal larger backgrounds for dramatic effect, easily incorporate audio components, and choose from endless themes. If you’re struggling for inspiration, Prezi offers suggestions and interesting tools that help boost even the most boring series of slides.
• ClickShare : Is your classroom prone to technical troubles? No IT professional on site? ClickShare is a wireless presentation and collaboration tool that projects slides from any device with the touch of a button. Connecting slides to projectors is so easy that a glitch will never delay the start of a presentation in your classroom again. ClickShare also fosters collaboration, letting multiple students and teachers work together on different accounts. If you want to be there while students master the art of presentations, monitor their progress and provide input when students begin struggling.
• DyKnow : DyKnow allows teachers to create SMART boards from any ordinary whiteboard. The tool opens like PowerPoint and allows teachers to write on computers using special pens while projecting the presentation to students in real time. Students can view presentations on their personal devices and, to be sure students are actually watching, teachers have the power to block websites so students can only access presentations. Have students out sick? Save presentations to a server and kids can access them anytime, anywhere.

With the smartphone and tablet and VR phenomenon exploding from generation to generation, kids have more distractions than ever before. That means teachers today face an especially tough challenge in keeping kids’ attention towards their lesson plans and away from a separate screen sitting in backpacks and laps.

If students are bored with PowerPoint, Google Slides, and other generic presentation tools, WOW them with video, audio, and imagery that mirrors the content they spend hours watching on YouTube and Netflix. As teachers learn to master the art of engagement, kids will inevitably learn by example and begin creating powerhouse presentations of their own.

Disclosure: This preceding post was sponsored. We were compensated by the sponsoring company, and consider this to be an advertisement. However, we only endorse or recommend services or products that we think would be a good fit for our readership. We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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Using Classroom Presentation Tools to deliver engaging lessons

Since I started this beautiful journey as a teacher, I knew it was going to be a great challenge. We all know that we must spend a lot of time planning classes that keep our students engaged and motivated. During these twenty years teaching, I have witnessed all the changes and advances in English Language Teaching, from working with tape recorders, using only print books, and designing materials to fit the right level to all the fantastic classroom presentation tools we have today.

Classroom Presentation Tools have come to make our lives easier. We need to take advantage of all the benefits we get from them. They help us create an interactive learning experience, deliver engaging lessons and save time when planning. What are those features that make Oxford University Press’ Classroom Presentation Tools unique? Well, grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy this tour.

Let’s start with the amazing Oxford English Hub , where you can now access Classroom Presentation Tools for our best-selling international courses. Along with accessing Classroom Presentation Tools, Oxford English Hub provides one place for easy access to ALL your digital course materials, for every step of the teaching journey. With interactive content and smart tools to save your time, and integrated professional development tailored specifically to your course, to support your teaching.

Let’s take a closer look at the features of Classroom Presentation Tools. Although all of them are important and useful, we are going to highlight five of them:

1. Embedded audio and video

All audio tracks and videos are just one click away and embedded in the right place in the Student Book or Workbook. The audio player provides great listening practice! You can adjust the speed of the track to support your students when they don’t understand or challenge them to listen to it faster. With the AB loop, you can select one specific part to play on repeat.

The video player supports your teaching by showing students the use of the language they are learning. One recommended strategy is to play it without sound first to make your students guess what is happening and help activate their schemata about the topic. Some videos have the script embedded in them to use them for role plays or discussion.

Focus is an effective tool to help students concentrate on one task at a time and make it easier to answer in class. By opening an exercise full-screen, it allows you to project one activity and not the whole page. Within this tool, you have access to all the other necessary tools such as Draw and Highlight, Check Answers, Show Answers, and the audio and video players.

3. Show answers tool

Most of the time, the answers to all exercises are in the Teacher’s Guide. However, having them embedded in the CPT saves you a lot of time! You can show all the answers at once by clicking on the big eye or request individual answers at the small eye. It will help students to check, correct and review their answers.

4. Notes tool

One way to use the Notes tool is to write or record reminders for your classes. However, you could also use the Text Note to write instructions for specific tasks. You can substitute writing on the physical board, a platform board, or dictating. Alternating them is a way of breaking with the traditional way of teaching.

5. Switch books tool

Saving time has become a key element when planning and teaching your classes. In your planning and teaching, you may use two CPTs: one for the Student’s Book, and one for the Workbook. The Switch books tool helps you change from one book to the other in one click in your CPT. Imagine that you assign an activity in the Student Book, and you’d like to complement it with the related pages or exercises in the Workbook. Simply click the link to switch to the relevant page of your second book. You can go back to your first book using the Switch book icon in the toolbar.

These are just five of many features you have in your Classroom Presentation Tools, available on Oxford English Hub. I’m sure you’ll love them as much I do!

“Bring your coursebooks to life in the classroom. Simply present your learning resources on screen for highly engaging lessons either face to face or online.”

Andrea Espinach Roel is a full-time Oxford Educational Consultant for Central America. She holds a master’s degree in Educational Administration. Before entering the publishing industry, she taught English as a second language for twenty years in Costa Rica to all age groups (kids, teenagers, young adults, and adults). She’s been an Academic Coordinator in different institutions and has experience in designing English Programs for all ages in areas such as English, Science, Business, Technology, and Electromechanics.

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Great tools for real-time learning.

i will try the recommended presentation tools

I love the content of OUP text books but a frustration I have with the ebook is not being able to keep students’ written answers fixed onscreen in the exercise space; if you use the platform’s text writing tool, the answers scroll down the page as you go through exercises. I take screen shots to keep a copy, but sometimes you want the answers to be visible on the same page for the students so they can use them e.g. in a speaking activity at the foot of the page. Any possibility this will change in the future?

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10 online tools to help you create beautiful classroom presentations.

By DefinedSTEM,

By Gloria Kopp

Slideshows and presentations, whether they are PowerPoint or otherwise, are a great way to introduce new concepts and educate your students in new and exciting ways so they can grasp the data a lot easier.

Most children these days are very visual learners and instead of having teachers stand at the front of the class simply relaying information out of a textbook, using a PowerPoint presentation is a great way to make things easier and a lot easier to understand.

However, having a poorly made presentation or slideshow is only going to make things even more difficult to understand. So you can create the best quality presentations, here are 10 tools you can use at home or even with your class in the lessons!

Glogster is a leading multimedia creation app which works online to help you create interactive posters that can be used in your presentations, slideshows and individually to convey any information you want to convey professionally and in an easy to read format.

Marketed as one of the best things to happen to the presentation industry, Prezi is ideal for creating high-quality presentations to use for any subject you can think of, whether it’s from scratch or using any of the pre-made templates. One of the leading features is the incredibly easy to use drag and drop function.

A free online tool that offers high-quality presentation templates. The easy-to-navigate platform allows you to create, edit and share presentations with your colleagues quickly and easily.

Within your presentations, it’s sometimes a lot easier to use videos to explain certain points or to share videos that your class may have made during a few lessons. Animoto is an easy way to create beautiful videos from clips or photos organized into a slideshow format.

Easy Word Count

A free online tool you can use when creating the written content for your presentations. When creating presentations, you need to make sure that the information isn’t just blocked onto the presentation but is more like notes. Use this tool to track that you aren’t writing too much.

State of Writing

When writing the content for your presentations, you want to make sure that the text is correct, both factually and in the sense of the way, it’s written, such as grammar and punctuation. Of course, it’s easy to overlook these things when creating a visual presentation, which is where State of Writing can help.

In regard to your written content, when it’s all written out and just before you do your final proofreading checks, you’ll want to make sure that you’re communicating the message that you want to communicate. When it comes to editing, use this tool to teach you everything you need to know.

An online movie maker where you can stitch together clips, movies and photos into one clip that you can add to your presentation to create a new visual style of learning within your classes.

An easy to use and 100% free slideshow maker you can start using directly from your web browser to create high-quality presentations for your class or with the help of your students. This is a great tool for teaching students how to make their own presentations.

Boom Essays

A professional online writing tool you can use to help you proofread your presentation slides and content to make sure that it’s free from errors and reads well, ensuring the highest quality content.

This is a free online tool you can use for adding citations, references and quotes to your presentation in a professional format so they are easy to read, contain all the information that professional quotes should have and have the maximum amount of educational value.

As you can see, there is a wealth of tools available at your disposal that you can use when creating presentations for your class to make it yet while making sure everything is perfect for the best educational experience.

Gloria Kopp is an educator and a tutor at  Academized . She shares her tutorials and guides at HuffingtonPost , Engadget, Microsoft and  Paper Fellows  blogs. Gloria is also an author of  Studydemic  educational project for students and educators

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13 websites to make presentations for any classroom – easy edtech podcast 228.

• August 15, 2023

In this episode, discover how to take presentation creation to the next level in your classroom! Tune in to hear about thirteen student-friendly websites to make presentations with kids of all ages. From animated videos to automatic translations, these flexible creation tools have you covered!

Listen  to the podcast episode on your favorite platform:

• Apple Podcast App
• Google Podcasts

Tips for Websites to Make Presentations

• Choose a tool where you and students can share information.
• Revisit your toolbelt to see if you can rethink a favorite in another way.
• Share a presentation tool that will help make another educator’s life easier.

SPONSORED BY the “Free Stuff” section of my blog

This episode is sponsored by the “Free Stuff” section of my blog. Did you know that there is a page on my site full of free stuff and favorites. You can find Weekly Planner Pages for Educators, 60+ Time-Saving Prompts to Use with ChatGPT, Graphic Organizers For Students, and lots more. You can find the “free stuff” section of my website by going to ClassTechTips.com and clicking the FREE STUFF button at the top of the page.

FOLLOW & REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS

Have you subscribed to the podcast yet? I don’t want you to miss an episode and hope you’ll keep following along with me on this podcast journey. When you follow along on Apple Podcasts the new episodes will appear in the app so you don’t have to remember to go looking for them…  Click here to follow on Apple Podcasts ! And if you have a minute for a BIG favor, add a rating and review to the podcast, too — I would certainly appreciate it!

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Episode resources.

• Connect with Dr. Monica Burns on Instagram or Twitter
• Google Slides (Free Online Presentation tool)
• Prezi , Prezi for Students & Prezi for Teachers (Presentation, Design, & Video Creation tool) 
• Canva for Education (Graphic Design platform)
• Visme for Education (Graphic & Presentation tool)
• Apple Clips (Video Creation tool)
• Emaze (Online Presentation software)
• Powtoon (Animated Video Presentation tool)
• Genially (Interactive content creation tool)
• Adobe Express for Education (Free creation tools)
• Microsoft PowerPoint Online (Online Presentation tool)
• Padlet (Online Discussion tool)
• Beautiful.AI & Beautiful.AI for Education (AI-powered presentation tool)
• Piktochart for Education (Collaborative graphics & presentation tool)
• 12 Websites to Make Timelines with Students (Blog Post)
• Creative Challenge for the First Weeks of School (Blog Post)
• How to Create a Comic Strip in Google Slides (Blog Post)
• 13 Websites To Find Free Books for Your Classroom (Blog Post)
• 11 Free Google Podcasts for Kids (Blog Post)
• 14 Artificial Intelligence Teaching Tools (Blog Post)

Stay up-to-date on all things EdTech.

EdTech tips and resources for educators, straight from Monica’s desk every Monday. Don’t miss a thing. 

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Monica Burns

Dr. Monica Burns is a former classroom teacher, Author, Speaker, and Curriculum & EdTech Consultant. Visit her site ClassTechTips.com for more ideas on how to become a tech-savvy teacher.

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8 Tips to Power-Up Your Classroom Presentations

Last month, I attended a Back to School Night for parents, sitting through presentation after presentation by teachers, some with slides that helped make their presentation a delight to listen to, and others . . . well, that's why I'm writing this blog post.

The goal of a classroom presentation is to aid you in effectively conveying information in a way that allows students (or their parents) to remember what you said. Unfortunately, for some, the presentation becomes a crutch, and they begin to rely on the slides to tell their story, rather than to help them tell the story.

I've been creating presentations using software like PowerPoint and KeyNote for 20 years, and I've learned a lot about how to most effectively communicate. Here's what I've found.

1. Use as Many Slides as You Need

It's a common myth that better presentations use fewer slides. This is simply not the case. I once sent an education conference presentation to the organizers so they could preview it in advance of my speaking. They wrote back, concerned that my 45-minute presentation had 116 slides. I looked it over and realized they were right! I revised it and sent a presentation with 135 slides back to them. I finished my talk with 5 minutes to spare -- just enough time to take questions -- and the presentation was a huge success.

The number of slides in your presentation is irrelevant. What matters is how well your slides communicate and how much time you spend talking about each slide. Spending five minutes on five slides will almost always be more engaging to your students than spending five minutes on a single slide, even when the information is exactly the same.

In the movie Amadeus , the Emperor of Austria complains to Mozart that his music has "too many notes." Mozart responds, "There are just as many notes as are required. Neither more nor less." Use as many slides as you need to make your point. No more. No less.

2. Minimize Verbosity

Your slides are there to support what you are saying, not to say it for you. Keep your word count low, and only place one main point on a slide, plus three to five sub-points if absolutely needed. Remember tip #1 above -- don't be afraid to use more slides. They're free! Also, the language in your slides doesn't need to be in complete sentences. Pare the text to as few words as possible, using what's there only to emphasize and reinforce -- not replace -- the words coming out of your mouth.

3. Maximize Visuals

Photos, figures and icons work as visual memory triggers. They help your students remember what it is you're saying. Any time you can add a visual that helps illustrate or reinforce the points you're making in your slides, you should use it. One great way to do this on the cheap is to use public domain or creative commons photos you can find on Flickr or Google .

4. Reduce Noise

Many teachers like to add banners, headers, footers, page numbers and more noise to their slides. Unless the information needs to be on every slide for a vital reason (which is rare), you should remove it. All these redundant elements do is create distractions from the content of your slides. I find this to be especially true of page numbers. Imagine if a movie included a time code at the bottom, constantly reminding you how long you had been watching. All this does is serve to take the viewer out of the moment. Page numbers in slides really don't provide any useful information -- they just remind your students how long they've been watching.

Pursuant to tips #1 and #2, you're not going to win awards by cramming the most content on the fewest slides. Make text and visuals as large as you can. Not only does this make them easier to see and read, but larger images and text make a greater impact to aid memory. There's nothing wrong with filling an entire slide with a photo, and then placing text right on top. You may have to use a transparent background immediately behind the text so that it's clearly readable, but the overall effect is almost always more memorable than just some text beside an image.

6. Highlight What You Are Talking About

While you are presenting, your students may be momentarily distracted taking notes, thinking about what you are saying, glancing out the window, possibly even daydreaming. When they refocus on your slides, though, they need to quickly pick back up where you are, or you risk losing them again.

• Use contrast or call-outs to clearly show the area of the slide you are talking about.
• Reveal bullet points or table rows one at a time so that the last one visible is the one you are talking about.
• Use arrows, circles or other pointers to show what you are referencing in specific parts of an illustration, photo or graph.
• Animate and reveal parts of illustrations and graphs (where possible) to build your story rather than showing everything at once.
• Use bold type or different colors to highlight the keywords in any lengthy text.

7. Transition Changes

Humans suffer from an affliction called change blindness -- we have a hard time seeing changes unless there is a clear transition between the states. This is especially a problem in presentations where slides may look very much alike. Most programs include transitions that can be used between slides or on elements in the slides themselves.

My favorite transition is the cross-dissolve -- where the first slide fades down while the next slide fades up -- but different transitions can help illustrate points in your presentation. Are you talking about combustion or the fire of London? Use a flame transition. Talking about photography or Hollywood movies? Use the flashbulb transition. Even "cheesy" transitions help overcome change blindness and aid student memory at the same time.

8. Repeat Yourself Redundantly

It’s OK to repeat the same slide more than once -- especially when using images -- if you are reminding students of an earlier point. Obviously, this is not a license to be monotonous. However, if you want to tie separate ideas together, emphasize a point or splash in a little comic relief, it's perfectly fine to repeat a slide.

Bonus Tip: Make it Funny!

There's little doubt that emotional responses can aid memory. While it can be difficult to apply this power in a classroom slide presentation, humor is easy enough, and adding a bit of levity to your presentations at the right points can work to give students vital memory hooks.

Remember, the point of presentation slides is not to replace you as the teacher, but to help your students understand and remember what you are teaching. Overwhelming them with too much information can be just as harmful as underwhelming them with too little.

• Grades 6-12
• School Leaders

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50 Things You Might Recognize if You’ve Been Teaching More Than 10 Years

Embrace your experience!

Teaching beyond 10 years should be a badge of honor. You’ve seen a lot (some things you wish you could unsee), and you’ve watched things evolve and change along the way.

Now if you’ve been teaching for 15, 20, or 30+ years, that’s an even bigger accomplishment—major kudos to you. So to celebrate some of those familiar, amazing, and old-school moments of being a teacher, we asked our Facebook fans to share with us some of their best Remember when … ? items and practices.

Which ones do you recognize?

1. So. Much. Chalk Dust.

Before whiteboards, we had blackboards and chalk—and all the chalk dust that came with it. And, of course, on the days when you’d lean against the chalk tray while you lectured, you’d end up with a chalk line or two in a rather … conspicuous place.

2. The Joy of Colored Chalk

Most schools supplied teachers with an almost unlimited supply of white chalk, but colored chalk was harder to get your hands on—and that much more exciting when you did.

3. Clapping the Erasers

Every few days, chalkboard erasers had to be “clapped” to get rid of the dust. This was a coveted classroom job, as students usually were sent outside or at least got to lean out the window in order to do it.

4. Chalk Holders

The coolest teachers bought themselves chalk holders to protect their hands from the dry, dry, DRY feeling of holding chalk all day long.

5. The Chalk Liner Tool

This nifty tool let you draw parallel lines on the chalkboard and was great for teaching music or handwriting. Way better than using a yardstick to draw the chalk lines by hand.

6. Old-School Overhead Projectors

Source: Mailer_diablo via Wikipedia

The original overhead projectors used plastic sheets often referred to as “transparencies.” The light bulb was toasty warm, which was great on cold days but also had a nasty habit of melting anything left underneath it for too long (including the occasional transparency sheet).

7. Vis-a-Vis Marker Fingers

To write on overhead transparencies, you used wet-erase Vis-a-Vis markers. These could be cleaned off with a wet sponge or paper towel, but somehow you never had one handy, so you spit on your finger and used that instead. And once that ink was on your fingers, it NEVER wanted to wash off.

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8. Opaque Projectors

If you wanted to project a page from a book or something similar, you could use an opaque projector. This also had a nasty habit of burning anything left on them for too long.

9. Carousel Slide Projectors

Source: Steve Morgan via Wikipedia

Once upon a time, if you wanted to show photos to your class, you had them turned into slides and then showed them using one of these projectors. And somehow, they always went in upside-down or backward—or both.

10. Filmstrip Projectors

Filmstrips displayed a series of still images and were usually accompanied by a narrative that had been recorded on vinyl or a cassette tape, which dinged to tell you when to advance the frame (a common classroom job). Later models automatically advanced the film along with the tape.

11. Reel-to-Reel Projectors

Most schools had a couple of these available for teachers to use, and you could order films from a central repository in your county or district. Feeding the film through these took a bit of skill, and occasionally the film would snap apart in the middle of the movie, prompting a loud round of groans from the class.

12. The TV/VCR Cart

Like movie projectors, most schools only owned a couple of TVs back in the 1980s. These were checked out by teachers and rolled around to different classrooms, and it was always an exciting sight for kids to see one of arrive at the door.

13. Laser Disc Players

Those big TVs first came with a VCR, then with a DVD player. But some schools laid out big bucks for the very short-lived laser disc technology, which gained popularity during that in-between time. They looked a lot like compact discs but were much larger. This technology was quickly made obsolete by DVDs.

14. Record Players

There were all sorts of tricks for using record players, like laying a penny on the needle arm to keep the records from skipping, or counting the rings to find the right song or lesson to play for your class. Teachers knew them all.

15. Cassette Tape Recorders

Source: J.smith via Wikipedia

Records were replaced by cassette tapes, which also gave us the capability to record and play back audio. Of course, this came with the inherent risk of taping over whatever was already on the cassette, unless you remembered to pop that little tab first. Everybody forgot that at least once, though.

16. The Cassette Tape Pencil Trick

Source: Adobe Stock Photos

Sometimes, the tape recorder “ate” the tape. After oh-so gently detangling it, you could use a pencil to wind it back into place and hope that it hadn’t been damaged. It worked surprisingly often, though.

17. The Messy Mimeograph Machine

Long before photocopies, mimeographs were the first mass-duplicating technology in most schools. They worked by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. Teachers had to create the stencils using a sharp pen or typewriter, then ink the machine and crank the copies by hand—usually very messy hands by the time you were done.

18. The Ditto Machine (Spirit Duplicators)

Source: Kimsaka via Wikipedia

Spirit duplicators came next. Teachers created a “spirit master” sheet, which transferred a waxy ink (often purple—hence the nickname “Purple Durple”) to a limited number of copies, often called “dittos.” Ditto machine ink had a faint sweet smell, and students loved to sniff the freshly printed sheets as they were handed out.

19. Carbon Copies and Correction Fluid

Some forms (like early IEPs) came with carbons to make several copies at once. If you made an error on the original top sheet, you could correct it with white correction fluid. But the copies underneath were usually a variety of other colors, like yellow, pink, or blue, meaning you needed a whole collection of correction fluid hues.

20. Slide Rules

Source: Arnold Reinhold via Wikipedia

Before calculators, slide rules did complicated math for you, including division and multiplication. It was also used for exponents, roots, logarithms, and more. And it didn’t need batteries.

21. Typewriters and Typing Class

Typewriters weren’t just for school secretaries. Many schools offered typing classes, with entire rooms full of kids learning to use the very noisy machines. Unlike today, this skill usually wasn’t taught until junior high or high school, and girls were more likely than boys to take the class.

22. Word Processors

For a brief moment in time, word processors were high technology. They had a small screen so you could see and edit what you were writing before you printed it, which was much better than a typewriter. But in just a few years, personal computers were the same price and offered much more versatility.

23. The Apple IIe and Other Early Personal Computers

Early computers seemed like marvels, but mostly what people seem to remember today is playing Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand, and maybe a typing program or two.

24. Floppy Disks

Source: George Chermilevsky via Wikipedia

Floppy disks went through changes but were around for years. The earliest 5¼-inch disks were actually floppy, but over time disks became smaller and were encased in rigid plastic. Losing one of these was always terrifying because there was no such thing as backing up to the cloud in those days.

25. Dot Matrix Printers

Source: Sennur Dogan via Wikimedia Commons

Early printers fed paper continuously and printed everything with a series of dots. Savvy teachers could make banners for their classrooms, though if you didn’t reinforce the perforated seams with tape, they had a tendency to fall apart at inconvenient times.

26. Classroom Intercoms

Before cell phones, communicating with the main office involved either sending a student with a note or (if you were lucky) using the wall-mounted intercom.

27. Limited Telephone Access

Source: Jonathon Mauer via Wikipedia

With no email and no cell phones, contacting a parent usually meant waiting your turn to use the telephone in the main office or the staff room.

28. Encyclopedias

Source: Cornischong via Wikimedia Commons

Back in the dark ages, encyclopedias provided general information on most topics. Schools usually had a set or two in their library for all students to share.

29. Microfilm and Microfiche

Source: David Lisbona via Wikimedia Commons

If you wanted to look up an old newspaper or magazine article, you might have to use the library’s microfiche machine, which stored images on small film reels. Student records were sometimes stored like this, too.

30. Card Catalogs and the Dewey Decimal System

When you wanted to know if the library had any books on Alexander Hamilton, you’d head to the card catalog. Nonfiction books were organized by the Dewey Decimal System , a series of numbers that actually made it quite easy to find the book you were looking for in the stacks. Kids were often required to memorize it.

31. Library Book Cards

No scanners or bar codes here! A card was tucked into each library book, and students wrote their name (and often class or teacher) on the card. A due date was stamped or written on the card and kept by the library.

32. Attendance Registers

Source: Celia Weir via Pinterest

Attendance registers were the bane of many teachers’ lives. They had to be kept perfectly and reported to the main office on a regular basis. One teacher even remembers not being able to receive her last paycheck at the end of the year until she turned hers in.

33. Grade Books

Source: Ashland University

Teachers also tracked grades by hand, writing in each test and homework score. At the end of the quarter, they added and averaged grades by hand too.

34. EZ Grader

When grading papers by hand, the EZ Grader was a lifesaver. The sliding card gave you the student’s grade, based on the number of problems they got wrong. To be honest, you’ll still find these on quite a few teachers’ desks.

35. Handwritten Report Cards

Report cards were done by hand, too. In the early days, report cards were actual cards students took home each quarter and brought back with their parent’s signature. Later report cards were often completed using the Scantron bubble sheets, which then generated computer printed sheets students would take home.

36. Fountain Pens

Early ballpoint pens weren’t cheap, and students used fountain pens throughout the 1960s, and even in the 1970s in some places.

37. Cursive Handwriting

This is a topic of heavy debate these days, and many schools do still teach cursive. But we definitely don’t place the emphasis on handwriting and penmanship that we once did, for better or worse.

38. Diagramming Sentences

Source: Under Western Skies

This is another skill rarely taught these days. It helped students understand the parts of a sentence but could get very complicated.

39. SRA Cards

Source: Hack Education

This self-directed-reading program was a series of cards students could complete at their own pace. They had answer keys so students could correct their own work, and kids were responsible for keeping track of and recording their progress. Obviously, this sometimes worked well—and sometimes it didn’t.

40. Califone Cardmasters

This machine used magnetic cards to record a short bit of audio, often a teacher pronouncing a word or phrase. Students played the audio, then pressed record and repeated the word or phrase. They could then play the whole card to compare the two. These were used a lot for speech therapy and ESL learners.

41. Cutting and Pasting

Before computers, teachers did a lot of actual cutting and pasting. They cut out and pasted items to make their own handouts and worksheets, which could then be run through a copier (once those arrived).

42. School Paste

Speaking of paste, glue sticks haven’t been around forever, you know. Students and teachers used to use school paste by dipping a stick into the pot and spreading it around. This paste had a pleasant minty smell, so teachers had at least one or two paste-eaters in every class.

43. Cutting Letters by Hand

Source: Miss Giraffe’s Class

Before die cut machines, like Cricuts and Silhouettes, teachers cut letters for their bulletin boards by hand. They traced or drew them freestyle and cut them out one by one. To make them last longer, teachers sometimes laminated them by hand between sheets of clear contact paper.

44. Milk Breaks

Some schools still do morning milk breaks, but they used to be common nationwide.

45. Collecting Milk and Lunch Money

At the beginning of each day, teachers would collect milk money and lunch money (there was usually only one option for lunch) and send it to the office along with a count of how many of each would be needed that day. Because they didn’t already have enough to do.

46. Teacher Mailboxes

In the days before email, teachers needed to check their mailboxes at least once, and often more, every single day—no matter how far their classroom was from the office.

47. Student Desks With Storage

Source: Adobe Stock Photo

So many classrooms use tables or simple desks now, but once kids had desks with built-in storage. Of course, the things that got stored in them were often less than ideal—just ask the janitors who had to clean off chewed gum regularly.

48. Stockings and Skirts, Please

Source: Art Blog

Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, female teachers were expected to wear skirts and pantyhose every day. The option of wearing pants trickled in slowly. Even today there are some ridiculous wardrobe rules that teachers face, but most can wear casual pants now. Many even believe that teachers should be able to wear jeans every day .

49. Passing Notes

Source: Like Totally 80s

Texting is the clandestine way to communicate in the classroom these days, but once upon a time kids passed notes instead. These were often folded intricately with early text-speak abbreviations on the front (e.g., LYLAS = Love Ya Like a Sis). Teachers who intercepted a note could throw them out—or choose to read them out loud in class and watch the note passer squirm.

50. Paid in Cash

Yes, before the days of direct deposit and checks (even those are getting to be obsolete), teachers would line up and get paid in cash. Sometimes it would be in an envelope, but other teachers say the cash was just handed to them!

What are your favorite teaching memories?   Come and share in our  WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group  on Facebook.

Plus, check out these old-school recess games . 

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