TOP PICKS | 22 TOOLS

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 animations. Whether for practice or to reach an authentic audience, students can demonstrate their learning and gain valuable skills for college and career. There also are some great options for teachers to create lessons with slick multimedia and interactive elements such as video, audio, and embedded assessments.

Top Picks

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Nearpod

Interactive slideshow tool engages students, promotes collaboration

Bottom line: This effective tool leverages the capabilities of 1-to-1 environments and offers both teacher- and student-paced learning.

Grades: K–12 Price: Free, Paid The Silver edition is free for up to 30 students, the Gold edition is $120 per teacher per year for up to 50 students, and the Platinum edition is $349 per year for up to 75 students. In-app purchases are available for additional content, and schools and districts can receive volume discounts.

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Screencast-O-Matic

Create and share high-quality screencasts without breaking the bank

Bottom line: A well-designed screen and video recorder that lets teachers and students focus on creating engaging content from the get-go.

Grades: K–12 Price: Free, Paid Free accounts include recording, trimming, captioning, saving, and sharing features as well as three music tracks and 2GB bandwidth per month on the site. Deluxe and Premier plans cost $1.50 and $4 per month, respectively, and include additional recording and publishing features, video editing tools, and more.

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VoiceThread

Easily collaborate and create with voice, video, or image

Bottom line: A powerful tool for kids to create, collaborate, and share all kinds of multimedia.

Grades: K–12 Price: Paid A single educator account runs $15 per month or $79 per year for one teacher and up to 50 students. A school account starts at $450 per year, depending on the number of users and desired services; district packages are also available.

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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.

Grades: 2–12 Price: Free

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Buncee for Education

Easy-to-use slideshow tool offers customization, promotes creativity

Bottom line: With the right guidance, the abundance of design features make creating dynamic presentations a breeze.

Grades: 3–12 Price: Free, Paid The free plan has limited features. Classroom Lite is $10 per month ($100 per year) for unlimited Buncees. Classroom Plus is $20 per month ($200 per year) and includes assessment and management tools. Custom school and district pricing plans are also available.

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Explain Everything Whiteboard

Powerhouse tool for creating stellar multimedia presentations

Bottom line: Teachers and students can make dynamic presentations that involve different types of media in this innovative, fun app.

Grades: 3–12 Price: Free to try, Paid There's a 30-day free trial. The Education Plan is $4.99 per user, per year (minimum of 5 users). Individual plans are $24.99 per year.

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LessonUp

Flexible interactive presentation tool engages kids at school and home

Bottom line: LessonUp is for teachers who like designing unique lessons to reach every learner.

Grades: 3–12 Price: Free, Free to try, Paid Free basic subscription and a free 30-day trial of the teacher license; contact for the annual subscription cost.

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Loom

Create, present, and assess with free, effortless screencasting

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

Grades: 3–12 Price: Free

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Screencastify

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

Bottom line: If you have access to Chrome, Screencastify is an easy instructional tool that lets teachers and students communicate in new and creative ways.

Grades: 3–12 Price: Free, Paid Free version offers up to 50 watermarked videos per month and a maximum length of 10 minutes per video; premium version ($24 per year) removes the watermark and unlocks more features, including trimming and exporting capabilities. Bulk pricing is available for groups of teachers and districts.

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Spiral

Provide instant feedback with collaborative, multimedia assessment tool

Bottom line: Engaging, easy-to-use tool that supports both formative and summative assessment while allowing for student collaboration.

Grades: 3–12 Price: Free, Paid Spiral Teacher is free and covers up to five classrooms. The Pro Teacher subscription is $39 per teacher per year and offers unlimited classrooms, student accounts for home use, and progress reports. The Pro School subscription is estimated at $3 per student and offers Pro Teacher features plus additional ones, including full integration with the school's LMS.

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Canva - Photo Editor & Design

Create snazzy designs in seconds with flexible, cloud-based tool

Bottom line: A flexible, accessible way to get kids -- especially design novices -- creating digitally in your classroom if you have stable internet and time to get students set up to be successful.

Grades: 4–12 Price: Free

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ClassFlow

Robust lesson-creation, presentation tool offers built-in assessment

Bottom line: This powerful tool supports connected and blended learning from instruction to assessment, though it's best used to enhance already great instruction.

Grades: 4–12 Price: Free

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Pear Deck

Interactive slideshows offer a variety of ways to engage and assess

Bottom line: While it has some limits, the useful presentation features provide terrific options for formative assessment from any device.

Grades: 4–12 Price: Free, Free to try, Paid The Basic plan is free and includes integration with Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint as well as access to educator-created lesson plans. The Individual Premium plan is $149 per year and includes student-paced mode and more. Custom plans are available via quote and add report options and professional development.

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Keynote

Simple, elegant tool for creating presentations on mobile devices

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

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free

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Prezi Next

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 slideshows to put important content front and center.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free, Free to try, Paid The free Edu Standard version includes unlimited storage. The paid Edu Plus version (starting at $7 per month and with a 14-day free trial) adds more advanced presentation features, privacy controls, chat support, and offline access.

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Sutori

A slick way to share knowledge via interactive timelines and stories

Bottom line: With a super simple design, interactive features, and an imaginative personal approach, it's an easy and flexible tool for all kinds of classrooms.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free, Paid While basic accounts are free, they're limited to 200 student stories. Sutori's Premium accounts, which cost $49/year for educators, allow unlimited story creation, student collaboration (in pairs), and exporting stories to PDF. The $99/year Unlimited account adds the ability to upload custom videos and expands collaboration to larger groups.

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Sway

Cool scroll effects, flexible features boost visual storytelling tool

Bottom line: A great tool for design and presentation, if great visuals and easy sharing trump having the active viewing features present in other tools.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free Sway is free with an Office 365 account.

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Animoto

Create snazzy video slideshows with simple, flexible features

Bottom line: Slick music videos and slideshows are easy to make, but students need more controls to personalize them.

Grades: 7–12 Price: Free, Free to try, Paid 14-day free trial. Special free teacher subscriptions available; three pricing tiers for consumers ($8 to $39 per month).

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Adobe Spark

Super-flexible design tool for crafting fab images, videos, and sites

Bottom line: This free, one-stop shop for creating sleek graphics, web stories, and animated videos is incredibly easy to use and challenges students to think critically about visual presentation.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free

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Haiku Deck

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.

Grades: 8–12 Price: Free to try, Paid Free subscription is limited to three presentations. Pro subscription costs $59.88 per year or $9.99 per month for nonprofit/education accounts. Classroom subscription costs $99 per year (1 teacher, 150 students).

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