I have just starting using Sway in the classroom. It can be used as an excellent teaching tool, and I have used it for a couple of units I taught in French and English in 2020.

Because Sway is incredibly easy to use, and our students have access to it through the Microsoft suite available at school, I taught my students how to use it for a unit of work we studied in French.

After studying a unit on personal information, including biographical information, family, personality and careers in a unit of work for Year 9 French, students read a variety of excerpts from a range of famous French people. As an activity that demonstrated their understanding of language in the target language, we created an activity for students that required them to use the information they had learned, and then create a Sway presentation that would appear in an interactive museum. Students chose one of the famous French people (Kings, actors, sportspeople etc.) and presented the information as an infographic that one might find in a museum. This activity was great in that students were creating a response that provided a real purpose, were drawing on information learned and then had to present this information in a way (bi-lingual actually – for both English and French readers!). We got students to record their voices for the ‘read aloud’ function in Sway, and this was challenging and daunting for some students who had to listen to themselves speaking in French.

What we didn’t anticipate was how long this was going to take. We had to teach students the fundamentals of Sway, and the correct use of digital images. Fortunately in Sway, you can tick a box that only selects creative commons licensed material, but it was still a time consuming activity. In terms of learner response strategy however, it was great for students, as they respond really well to anything that involves technology!