First of all, to all of my teaching friends who have started back to school, I just want to say from the bottom of my heart how much I appreciate all that you do. I hope that this school year will present fewer challenges than last. Many of you probably have mixed feelings about beginning another year, and my wish is that we can all support each other as much as possible. With that in mind, I wanted to publish this post of some tools that can help make things easier.
Last year, I posted this article that is chock full of interactive slide templates designed by myself and others, and are ready for you to copy and download for free.
Though many of you know about the SlidesMania website (which is very supportive of educators), you may not know that the author also has an IconsMania website where you can download free icons also. She also has a Facebook Group and Wakelet collection. And if you really appreciate all that Paula does as a community service to educators, click on the coffee icon in the bottom right corner so you can buy her a mocha or two. I put one of Paula’s recent slides, Funfair Exit Ticket, at the bottom of this post.
Another site I like to visit for free slide designs is SlidesGo. One fun tool that I recently discovered by clicking on the More button at the top is Storyset. On Storyset, you can find customizable illustrations that you can download for free (with attribution), and it’s easy to use the online tools to change colors, select certain features of the illustration to hide, and decide the file type (svg or png). If you really want to explore the rabbit hole of free design options, click on that More button at the top of SlidesGo yourself, and investigate some of the other sites.
SlidesCarnival has been a long time favorite of mine when I need some inspiration, and Canva is another spot where I find them (some options are limited on the free plan, though).
Matt Miller of Ditch that Textbook has Social Media templates ready to go for you. (Be sure to check out his ULTIMATE Google Slides Teacher Resource when you have time for a really deep dive!)
Of course, Canva has tons of presentation templates specifically designed for educators right here.
If you want to play around with color on your presentations, I highly recommend the Coolors tool. I recently published this post with some other options, too. It includes a link to a Slides activity where students design their own color palettes – which would be an awesome “Getting To Know You” lesson!
To add some interest to your presentation, you can include animated GIF’s. Or, find free images with Pixabay, Unsplash, All4Ed, Photos4Class, Pexels, or Pics4Learning.
Whenever you can, make your presentations interactive using PearDeck or Nearpod.
Lastly, if you need some reminders of what NOT to do in a presentation, you can chuckle at this Worst Preso Ever that was crowdsourced several years ago. It was always a favorite for my students when we started working on Genius Hour!
