Keynote is a powerful tool both adults and students can use to create memorable and creative presentations. However, often times the power of this tool is underutilized. Students can use many of the features built into Keynote to bring a creative spark to notes, projects, presentations, movies, animations, and more. If you haven’t discovered the drawing tool you are missing out!
Apple’s own productivity apps received recent updates that enhanced many of their features. With this update came a new drawing tool that students can use to create their own drawings on slides, instead of having to switch to another application. The drawing feature works best when using iPad so students can enhance their drawings using a stylus or Apple Pencil. How can this tool help enhance learning and allow students an opportunity to embrace their creativity?
While I know everyone may not feel they have a high capacity for artwork or drawing, the creation of original drawings to describe a process or to tell a story can engage students’ brains at the upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. And not every idea a student has is so easily transmitted through typed words. A popular notetaking method called sketchnoting is also a possibility with Keynote’s drawing tools on iPad.
How do you locate the drawing tool in Keynote you ask?
Click on the + icon, push the image square, tap drawing, and then the drawing tools will be accessible. Tapping each tool twice will allow you to customize the size and color opacity of the drawing medium. The color circle allows for you to choose from multiple color options. Swiping over will allow you access to the color wheel and it provides a dropper you can use to match colors within images you can already see on screen.
Why use this new feature?
First, there are multiple ways for us to communicate. Drawing is a new feature that opens up new possibilities with the generous screen size of iPad. When students are drawing pictures of content or newly acquired information they are having to synthesize this information in order to make sense of the material. They may also be creating new knowledge with concepts they are trying to understand, which takes them to the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. A great example is when we’ve taught students how to use techniques like sketchnoting.
As you may have now discovered, Keynote is not just a presentation tool! With the enhancement of this new drawing feature the walls have been widened to allow the end user an opportunity to add their own creative flare to presentations, notes, animations, and more! Check out this video of how one teacher uses drawing in Keynote to animate graphics.
Use the “line draw” build in, to bring drawings to life like in the Earth & Moon drawing featured below.
Math teachers! You can even easily make videos of yourself teaching!