Microsoft: PowerPoint Compared to Sway

Both PowerPoint and Sway are presentation software. All UNCG faculty and staff can access both PowerPoint and Sway through UNCG’s license for Office 365. The link to access Office 365 is located here: https://portal.office.com/Home You can use the Office tools online, or download them for whatever device you are using. Note that Sway is an online-only tool.

At first glance the products are quite similar, so you may wonder why and/or when you would choose to use one over the other. This document offers a brief comparison of the two products.

Sway

Sway is a cloud based program, meaning that to use it, you login to the Office 365 website and create your Sways while online. You do not download the program to your laptop, however there is a Sway app that you can download to use on your smart devices. Sway is also a simpler program than PowerPoint, with fewer controls and formatting options.
 
Sway has a built-in design engine, which means that you will not have a lot of control over the design of your presentation. This, however, can be a good thing because the built-in formatting means that each Sway’s layout is adaptive—it will automatically display correctly on any sized screen (PC, laptop,phone, tablet, etc…). You will probably want to choose Sway is for situations where you are willing to leave most of the design decisions (positioning, colors, layout, fonts, etc.) to Sway. With Sway, you insert pre-existing content and the program creates a web/mobile sway (presentation). There are many different ways to add content to a sway:






Notice above that you can insert content from your Office OneDrive, Flickr, Bing, PicHit, YouTube, Twitter, or you can upload directly. Note that you cannot create visual content, such as charts and graphs, directly within Sway. Sway can also suggest content for you to use. Sway will look at the content you have already added and make suggestions for additional content.
When choosing content from external sources such as Flickr, YouTube, etc... you have to be mindful of potential copyright restrictions on the content.
 
Once you have created your Sway, you can distribute it in a few ways:

1. You can choose to share the Sway only with members of your organization (UNCG). With this option, you can choose to get a link to share, or you can get embed code to place on a web page.
2. You can choose to share with anyone who has the link, in which case people outside of UNCG can access the Sway if they have the link. You can share the link via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc…, or you can get embed code to place on a website.
3. Your final option is to make the sway Public, which means that, whether you use a link or embed code, the sway becomes discoverable on search engines.

 
Here is a short YouTube video overview of Sway:

Check the Office 365 blog for the latest Sway news.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint is available through Office 365, and can be used online or you can download it to your computer. PowerPoint allows you complete control over all aspects of the presentation design, including layout, text, fonts, etc.. This may be especially important if your presentation has to meet specific branding guidelines. 

You can add a wide variety of content to the presentation, includes (but is not limited to): text, images, charts and graphs (which you can create from within PowerPoint), audio and video, equations, screen narrations (which you can record from within PowerPoint), and objects (like full Word docs or Excel spreadsheets). You can also control features such as slide transitions and animations.






Although you have complete control over the appearance of the presentation during the design phase, you are more limited in the output options for your PowerPoint. You can of course save the file as a PowerPoint file and share the file as an email attachment or link on a website, and anyone with PowerPoint or a PowerPoint viewer can watch the presentation. Similarly, you can save the presentation as a PDF, but this option loses all animations, effects, audio, etc.. from the slideshow. You can also save your PowerPoint as a video file. This option too will remove some effects, but will still allow the viewer to click through the slides and listen to any narration.


Recommendations: 

Sway: for presentations that rely heavily on online content; if your viewers will be guiding themselves through your presentation online (best option for online viewing) 

PowerPoint: if you need to create a lot of charts, graphs, etc…; if control over the appearance is very important (branding requirements); if you want narrated slides; if you are presenting live to an audience

Canvas: How to Excuse an Assignment

Sometimes, instructors want to excuse a student from an individual assignment. You can excuse a student from an assignment, graded discussion, or quiz. You can also excuse a student from a group assignment. Excused assignments are not calculated as part of a student's total grade.

When an assignment is excused, the assignment page and the student grade page will show the student that he or she has been excused from the assignment.

Students cannot submit excused assignments.

To excuse a student from an assignment, go to the GRADES area and type EX in the cell where you would normally type the grade. Then press the ENTER key.

For more information, see the Canvas documentation, located here:
http://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/386299-how-do-i-excuse-an-assignment-for-a-student-in-the-gradebook

Canvas: New Dashboard User Interface Coming

On December 11th, ITS plans to turn on the new user interface for the dashboard area of Canvas. The dashboard is the main landing page that appears immediately after you log into Canvas. This is the only page that will be affected- the appearance of courses themselves should remain the same.

Essentially, the new user interface (UI) moves the tabs/links traditionally found along the top of the Canvas screen to the left side of the screen:

The links for Courses, Groups, Calendar, Inbox, and Account have moved from the top area of the screen to the left side of the screen. Additionally, the middle area of the screen will now provide a more visual view for updates within courses you have favorited. The four tabs underneath each course "square" represent the four main Canvas features for student course activity: Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, and Files. 
A line beneath the tab indicates new activity (see the blue line under the Discussions icon for the first course in the above image; click on the image to enlarge).

For more detailed information about the new UI, please see the following article:

http://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/420619-how-do-i-use-the-dashboard-new-canvas-ui

Students and eReserves in Canvas

A number of instructors have reported students who are unable to access eReserves in Canvas and have not been able to get immediate assistance from either 6-TECH or the Library. So far, the problem has been that the students (just like with instructors) need to first activate their UNCG Box accounts before accessing eReserves in Canvas (since eReserves are housed in Box).

To activate your UNCG Box account (for faculty, staff and students):

1. Go to http://box.uncg.edu and login with your UNCG credentials (username (NOT full email address) and password). This will activate your personal Box account. Your personal Box account will not show your eReserves- you just need to login here at least once for eReserves purposes, although you may of course continue using your Box account for file sharing and storage once you have activated it, if you would like. 
2. After you have activated your Box account, then access your eReserves like normal through your Canvas course. You may still get a prompt to login to Box, but if so it will be inside of the Canvas course framework.

Please note that you will not be able to access eReserves if you are logged into Canvas via the mobile app on either an iOS or Android device.

Synchronous Learning Management System Study

The University has begun a study to explore options for a synchronous learning management system at UNCG. Very generally speaking, a synchronous learning system is an online system that provides tools for instructors to meet with students online, but in real-time. These tools can include chat, videoconferencing, and screen sharing capabilities. UNCG currently uses Blackboard Collaborate as the primary supported SLMS on campus (Bb Collaborate does integrate with Canvas). The SLMS Study team has selected Webex and Blackboard Collaborate to be piloted during the Fall 2015 semester. The study team expects to deliver a product recommendation to Provost Dunn and Vice Chancellor Clotfelter by November 1, 2015. 

If you are interested in following the progress of the study, you can visit the website at
http://slms.uncg.edu

If you are interested in piloting one of the two systems, please contact me directly (aawarffo@uncg.edu) and I can get you started.

An Easy Way to do Polling with Your Students

Canvas does have an app available for download, Polls for Canvas, which is a very easy way to create polls in your class. Here is the link for detailed documentation on how to use the app:

http://guides.instructure.com/m/22678/l/237896-what-is-the-polls-for-canvas-app

Using the Polls for Canvas app requires a Canvas account, but it also requires students have a smart phone or tablet, which some students do not have. Here is an easy way to create polling in your course that makes use of the "liking" feature in discussion boards:

1. Begin by creating a discussion board in your course.
2. In the options area of the discussion board, check the box to "Allow liking."
3. When you check this box, you will see two additional options:
   1. Only Graders Can Like
   2. Sort by Likes
4. To use the discussion as a poll, do NOT click the box for Only Graders Can Like, because then students will not be able to like (or vote) on the options you provide.
5. You may choose to click the box to Sort by Likes, which will let you quickly see which option is leading in the poll.
      
   
      
   
6. Submit the discussion.
7. Now, go into your discussion and make a separate post for EACH option you want students to be able to vote on in the poll. For example, if the discussion question is "I would like to spend tomorrow's class time going over which of the following from our assignments:", then you would make a separate post for each of the following: "word problems", "linear equations", "quadratic equations"
8. Students then go to the discussion board and like the post for whichever of the three choices they want to go over during class. 

Canvas Summer Workshops

I have scheduled a small number of Canvas workshops for the summer. The workshops are:

1. Canvas Overview for Organization Admins 
2. Making Your Canvas Course More Visually Appealing
3. Introduction to Canvas

All workshops will be held in McIver 140. 

Detailed workshop descriptions, schedule of dates, as well as the link to sign up can be found here:

https://workshops.uncg.edu/workshops-by-category.jsp?cat_id=77003015

If you are interested in a Canvas workshop this summer but are unable to attend one of the sessions above, you can also check the list of Canvas workshops offered by ITS, which can be found here:

https://workshops.uncg.edu/workshops-by-category.jsp?cat_id=77002773