As mentioned in our previous post, Sway is a tool that allows you to essentially create presentations, newsletters and other interactive content or media for digital viewing rather than a live presentation. In some instances, it has been successfully used to create training content for new employees or for new software packages.
This week on the GG blog, we’re going to start taking a more in-depth look at Sway and some of the things you can do with it.
Microsoft Sway is part of the Office suite, and a version of Sway is available for free, with any Microsoft Account. The app is available as a Windows Store app, or as an in-browser app. The advantage to having it installed as a Store app on Windows 10 is that it can be used without an internet connection. Of course, you’ll be missing some of the features and libraries available which require an internet connection if you’re offline, but it’s still possible to create and fill a layout with your own offline files.
Both the Microsoft Store version and the in-browser version are identical in layout and operation, which is useful if you’re switching between devices and want to take your Sways with you to work on. The first thing users see as they launch Sway is the Welcome screen, which has all of the available information and saved Sways on it.
You can create a new Sway document from scratch, with a completely blank slate, you can pick a topic, or you can choose to create a new Sway from a document you already have, for example, a Word document, a PowerPoint presentation or even a PDF.
Using the “Start from a Topic” option, Sway leverages Wikipedia’s free, creative commons content to allow to build an outline you can work with and expand upon. If you simply give it a topic, such as Electricity, Roman History or Ice Cream, for example, it will draw in some basic information on those topics, and generate a Sway outline. This can be a great way to get started if you’re working on presenting a particular topic or theory.
If you have something more advanced in mind but are struggling for inspiration, you can also pick from a number of templates, or view a variety of other pre-created example Sway documents to see if something catches your eye.
Stay tuned – next week we’ll continue our look into Sway and its functions and features.
