PPS Instructional Technology

Many teachers over the last year have used Adobe Spark with their students to create great projects to demonstrate learning.  Now Spark has made it even easier for teachers and students to create amazing projects with Spark for EDU. Portage students and teachers now all have Spark for EDU accounts.  Help your students create professional looking graphics, web pages, and videos in minutes with this simple but powerful creativity, presentation, and storytelling tool!  If you’re looking to create narrated videos, printed materials, graphics, or writing assignments that students can quickly and easily turn in, you want Spark. Learn how to get your students logged in and creating with this getting started guide .

With only 8 and a half days left in the school year, we are all looking for ways to keep out students engaged in the learning process while we wrap up the remainder of the curriculum for the year.  I may have found just the tool to help you with that very goal! Adobe Spark  allows you to "turn your ideas into impactful social graphics, web stories and animated videos—in minutes."  This free tool is super simple to use, works on Chromebooks, iOS devices, desktops, or laptops, and allows even our youngest users to create a professional looking project in minutes. There are three tools in Spark.  The first, Post, allows users to create a graphic, like a twitter banner or poster, to share a message.  I had my second and third graders create their own faux twitter banners.  They loved trying to share a message with simply a picture and a quote.  Here is a project created by Teah.  She chose this quote because it is what her family says every night before bed. The next