Sway Use Case series #1: Educator Sways
Sway makes it easy for you to create and share an interactive and multimedia-rich canvas that brings your ideas to life. It’s been amazing to see the variety of Sways created by educators, students, travelers, hobbyists, small business employees and more to share their passions, stories and expertise. This blog series is all about highlighting great examples of Sways across a variety of different scenarios.
In today’s blog, we’ll celebrate a number of interesting ways that educators are using Sway. Educators are always looking for new, easy-to-use tools to liven up the classroom and enhance the quality of their teaching. Sway is helping teachers engage their students, parents, and other teachers in exciting new ways—all while saving time and helping them focus on the important work they do in and around the classroom. Here are some highlights:
Swaying students with an interactive lesson and study guide
Alex Smilovitis (@mistersmilo) has been creating a number of Sways, for a number of different math units. From surface area to volume, percentages to profits and discounts, math comes to life in a new way with Sway. Here is a particularly awesome Sway by Alex, which brings a student through the fundamentals of quadratic function graphing. It includes dynamic visuals showing the effect that equation changes have on graphical output, interactive flashcard problems and a practice problem set (and answers!) at the end:
Using Sway as an interactive class feedback and voting platform
Andrew Fitz (United States, @AndrewNRoxanna) is a middle school band, orchestra and multimedia teacher. Sway has been helping Andrew pioneer the use of digital multimedia to enhance his teaching and engage his students. In this example, Andrew used Sway as a canvas to showcase student-made concert fliers from a class project (embedded using Word Online) and then solicit feedback and voting on the class favorites. He even included the voting results in an embedded Excel chart!
Recapping a class project in Sway
Ana Živković (Serbia, @teacherka) is an English as a second language (ESL) teacher in Serbia. After 7th grade literature classes at her school and a partner school in Mexico both studied Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince,” they made artwork, animated film and live action videos to bring the narrative to life and outline its lessons. Then the two classes got together over Skype to discuss their experiences. Here is the Sway Ana used to bring to life the story of how a classic tale, mixed with modern technology, could unite students across the globe in a fun and interactive way.
Enriching a student concert with an interactive Sway program supplement
In a fantastic blend of the physical world and the digital world, Andrew Fitz used another Sway to bring a whole new depth to his orchestra students’ holiday concert. Parents and other concertgoers could use their smartphones to scan a QR code he printed on the concert program, which opened a Sway with all sorts of additional information about the students’ hard work and excitement that went into preparing the concert.
Training other educators with Sway
Jeremy Pearson (United Kingdom, @jeremypearson) is an IT manager for a 3-16 school. E-safety (Internet safety) is an important topic for educators to understand, and Jeremy used Sway to help make a variety of resources available to his fellow educators. His guide serves as a sampling of reference material from people and organizations who champion e-safety for education professionals. Check out Jeremy’s digital guide to navigating the digital world:
These are just some of the many great examples of Sways we’re seeing daily from educators. Many thanks to all who have spent time creating Sways and inspiring students, parents, and other teachers with their interactive content. Feel free to continue sharing with us on Twitter at @Sway. We can’t wait to see what you create next!
—Sway team, @Sway
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