Cool Tool #5: Emaze

   This week's cool tool is a presentation tool called emaze.  I saw this on a classmate's blog last week and I wanted to try it out.  One of my classes at school is working on opinion writing and the students struggled with getting the format correct, so I wanted to make a presentation about opinion writing to try it out.  
     Right when I got to the website, I was able to quickly sign up and it took me right to an option where I could choose a template.  There were so many options, but for use in education they had templates called classroom, academic, and I chose the one called chalkboard.  They had many slide layouts to choose from and I just had to change the words and images for each one.  There is also an option to start from scratch which would likely be more practical for some content.  It was easy to manipulate especially if you have experience with power point or other common presentation tools because the icons are very similar.  
     Some positives of emaze are the simplicity and ease of maneuvering around the site and the wide array of templates and options.  The one negative that I have is that it was difficult to share it.  It was not embedding at first until I messed around with the site for awhile and when I tried to email it to myself it said it was sent, but then never showed up in my inbox.
     I could this being used by both teachers and students.  I used it as the role of a teacher to present a new topic for instruction, but students could use it for their own presentations when they are given assignments.  I saw this cool tool used to give an "About me" presentation with pictures and fun facts inserted.  There was a template for infographics as well  that could be used in the classroom.  Graphs and images can easily be added to the presentation so it could be used in many subject areas including math and science.
     I would like to explore emaze more by checking out the other templates.  I also would like to see how the feature to add videos would look in this presentation.  The thing I really liked about this tool is that there are so many options.  If you would like to check it out, click here!