This is a guest post from Kathryn Riva (@KathRiva), a Microsoft #MIEExpert15 teacher from South Africa. Visit her class blog at http://kidblog.org/MrsRsClass-14/ and her Grade 5 wiki at: https://micklefieldgrade52014.wikispaces.com/  Kathryn’s profile on the Microsoft Educator Network can be found at http://www.pil-network.com/profile/resources/93c9c707-803f-4fac-a53b-bc1e294a0b5e (you will need to (join and) log in first to view this) where you’ll see she has uploaded 13 great activities.

What is Microsoft Sway?

Think PowerPoint but quicker with a built in design system.

How I went about creating my first Sway

I set off to attempt my first Sway as an experiment for my Grade 5’s first section in History on Egypt.  I thought, “How awesome would it be to have a pre viewable summary on Ancient Egypt to send to my class as a flipped classroom experiment.”

I began by creating a heading and adding a picture… that seemed easy enough. I then chose a layout and added a section page. Then suddenly I found it. The pop down menu on the left side of my screen.  It has links to OneDrive, Facebook, Bing, PicHit, YouTube, Twitter and all you have to do is type your topic in the search bar, drag and drop…piece of cake.

I love the simplicity of using Sway. No searching, saving, downloading, uploading, positioning and saving again and again.  It is automatically saved online to your Microsoft account and so can be accessed and edited anytime, anywhere.

A downfall I found is that I could not upload my own video creations or cut the time down on existing videos.  However, Sway is still in its early stages and you can see all the amazing new layouts and features to come.

The result

I think my first attempt was quite successful and I look forward to flipping my classroom this week and finding out what my class think of Microsoft’s latest creation. 

To view my Microsoft Sway: https://sway.com/1LRmOhEJX4b22rzr. It is embedded below: