Cool Tool #2- Emaze

The Cool Tool that I chose to review for this week is Emaze. Emaze is the next generation of PowerPoint presentation that expands to offer a creation tool to the social hubs such as website design, blogs, ecards, and photo albums. With Emaze you are able to add media, GIFs, and live social feeds.

Some features that Emaze has is that it is easy to share content anywhere and monitor who is watching. It is also easy to use, has front-line designs and be used on more than one device. Along with that Emaze has language support and is cloud based so you are able to save on your cloud. You can also upload an existing PowerPoint and make changes from there OR you can create your own from scratch. Something else that is nice is that students can use their Google account information to create an Emaze, which means that they will not have to memorize new information. 

Emaze could be used in the classroom for presentation purposes both for teachers and students. For teachers this could be a good way to present notes on a new topic and since it is interactive and movable it will keep students' attention. Since you can add video clips right to your presentation you do not have to worry about having to exit out of your PowerPoint to view the clip. For students, they could use it to share information to the class (ie. projects, group presentations) along with using Microsoft PowerPoint or Google slides. This could just be another option for students to use.

Personally, I would use this tool in place of PowerPoint because I think that this is more up-to-date; it has a more eye-catching presentation and more tools to choose from. This is easy to use (similar to PowerPoint) which means students could use it. The only problem I could see would be that the free version is very basic and limits what you are able to do, but that might be a plus because if you have too many bells and whistles students might get carried away and never turn in the assignment on time.

I think that this tool could definitely be used for students to create digital artifacts, it could also be the method they choose to present the artifacts of their choice. Or they could create a website or blog to share their artifacts as well. Any one of the options on this tool (website, blog, photo album) would work. This presentation technology is made advanced for optimal classroom engagement and also comes with interactive elements. I did not find that element when I made mine, so that might be included with the version that cost money OR I just did not dig deep enough. But, with that element you are able to track students' progress. Whichever version you choose to use will encourage collaborative learning and student engagement.

Overall, this tool was fun to use and is something that everyone can take part in. It will help enhance students learning because it is very visual and if  you are able to get the verison that cost money then it will also be interactive for students as well. This will also help you as a teacher keep an open mind with the different presentation tools out there other than PowerPoint.