Presentation tools are an important part of course design today. Teachers require an interactive way to engage students and provide them with the knowledge they need for their specific class. Presentations also help students learn if used correctly. The most common presentation tools, however, tend to be the PowerPoint-type of software that is installed on computers at schools. This type of software is often limited to what teachers can do for their students because it requires them to have access to a computer or projector with this software pre-installed on it. There are some new interactive presentation tools teachers can take advantage of though. These novel tools can be used by anyone with Internet access on any device without pre-installing special applications or limited programs.
What Is an Interactive Presentation?
An interactive presentation has some content objects you can interact with: hotspots, navigation, pop-up boxes, etc. This feature helps grab the audience’s attention and boost learner engagement.
We’ve collected the 12 best tools that’ll let you make your presentations interactive. Choose the one that works best for you and take your student learning experience to the next level.
Comparison Chart
| Software | The output | Great for… | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. iSpring Suite Max | Interactive presentations that can be played on any device. | Small and medium businesses, schools, and universities. | $970/year |
| 2. Nearpod | Interactive presentations for the classroom, distance, and hybrid lessons. | Schools – especially for distance learning. | Free basic version for classes of up to 40 students. Advanced plans range from $120/year for 75 students per lesson to $349/year for 90 students per lesson. |
| 3. Prezi | Web-ready dynamic presentations. | Businesses with a creative approach. | Pricing plans start at $3/month. |
| 4. Mentimeter | Well-designed interactive online presentations with real-time response data and its analysis. | Gathering feedback-based statistics at companies, schools, and universities. | Free basic version. The advanced plans range from $9.99/month per user to $24.99/month per user (billed annually). |
| 5. ClassFlow | In-class, online, or hybrid presentations that provide real-time statistics and can include a reward badge system. | Schools and universities that can’t afford a big budget but are eager to enhance their classes and keep their students engaged. | Free. |
| 6. SlideDog | Interactive multimedia presentations that include files in their original formats. | People who organize meetings, conferences, and other events that involve several speakers with individual materials of different formats. | Paid plans range from $19/month to $299/lifetime. |
| 7. FlowVella | Interactive online presentations that support smart gestures such as tapping, swiping, and zooming objects. | Exhibitors who need to create content to arrange iPad-based kiosks for events. | Free trial version for four presentations of up to ten slides. Advanced plans range from $10/month to $20/month, billed annually. |
| 8. IntuiFace | Interactive presentations with media automatically responsive to tap, swipe, and other touch screen gestures, that are available on any device. | Presentation designers who want to create a “wow effect” on a multi-touch screen at exhibitions, conferences, and other events. | Free basic version. Paid plans range from $746 to $2237 per year per concurrent user, billed annually. |
| 9. Visme | Beautiful interactive presentations that didn’t require a lot of time and effort to create, and can be shared both online and offline. | Educators, presenters, and communicators –especially those who prefer teamwork – as Visme lets you organize the project data into folders and provide role-based permissions. | The free basic version lets you create up to 5 projects. Individual plans, charged from $15 to $29 per month. |
| 10. Pear Deck | Beautiful interactive presentations that have lots of features to engage your students and have them feeling comfortable at your lessons. | Schools and educators working with children. | Free basic version. The individual premium plan is $149.99/year. |
| 11. Genially | Highly interactive and animated presentations that can be embedded into your website, or presented in any way you prefer. | People from different professional areas want to engage their audience by presenting their content dynamically, beautifully, and in a highly interactive way. | Free basic version. Paid plans range from 7.49€/month to 79.15€/month, billed annually. |
| 12. Beautiful.ai | Effective and attractive presentations that are easy and fun to create. | People who create or edit presentations often and want to spend less time on that task, while keeping their work at a high level. | Free basic version. Paid plans range from $12/month to $38/month, billed annually. |
1. iSpring Suite Max: “Fast Authoring Toolkit”
Rating: 4.7/5 – 319 reviews (G2 Crowd)
iSpring Suite Max is interactive presentation software that lets you design engaging courses alone or in a team, quickly and easily. It works as a PowerPoint add-in that provides tons of robust options. To make your presentation interactive, you can add dialogue simulations, quizzes, screencasts, and video lectures. You can use an existing PowerPoint presentation as a starting point and enhance it with iSpring tools or build one from scratch.
To make your learning content even more visually engaging, you can create interactions. There is a set of ready-made templates that can present your content as a FAQ, timeline, cyclic process, catalog, and many more. To save time and effort, you can use Content Library, with its more than 69,000 eLearning assets such as backgrounds, characters, and icons.
iSpring Suite also has an online space for teamwork and collaboration called iSpring Space. With this, users can build simple courses and quizzes directly in a browser, and work with colleagues on eLearning content in the cloud. Just send a course link to your colleagues, and they’ll be able to edit texts and polish the appearance of the course.
Usage
Even if you don’t get along with computers, you’ll find iSpring Suite easy to use. Just install the program, open it, and you’ll see the iSpring Suite tab on the ribbon of the PowerPoint interface. From there, you can access all the features of the software, and you won’t have to leave PowerPoint to use one or another feature. For example, unlike some other tools, you can record a screencast and synchronize it with the slides – all in one program.
iSpring Space is also extremely intuitive. All you need to do to start designing content with its tools is create an account.
Output
The courses you build with iSpring Suite Max will work on any platform: desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile. You can either publish your presentation in HTML5, or upload it to any LMS because iSpring Suite supports all eLearning standards: SCORM 1.2/2004, cmi5, xAPI, and AICC.
The courses you design with iSpring Space can be published to an LMS too. This web-based authoring tool supports SCORM and xAPI.
Great for
iSpring Suite is the best interactive presentation software for small and medium businesses that need to create versatile learning content. It is especially great for creators who prefer teamwork. Schools and universities might also find this tool ideal, as many features make the studying process extremely engaging and effective.
2. Nearpod: “Empowering Teachers, Inspiring Students”
Rating: 4.6/5 – 85 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Nearpod is designed specifically for the educational sphere. With this software, teachers can build online lessons, share them with students, and monitor their results. There are some really nice unique features like the ability to insert assessments into a video and thereby save the flow of the presentation, or Zoom integrity – you can combine your interactive presentation with an ongoing Zoom lesson, boosting student engagement and the effectiveness of the educational process overall.
Usage
Create your educational content, then log in to the Nearpod website, upload it there, and add interactive activities such as polls, memory tests, embed videos, or quizzes. You can share your ready-made presentation with your students by sending them an access code via email, the short link, or social media.
Output
Interactive presentations for the classroom, distance, and hybrid lessons.
Great for
Nearpod is the best interactive presentation software for schools, especially for distance learning.
3. Prezi: “The Most Dynamic and Engaging Presentations Ever”
Rating: 4.2/5 – 4,879 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Prezi is one of the best tools for making engaging lively presentations. Prezi Present lets you design animated content and present it over video. With Prezi Design, you can create all kinds of graphics, animate objects, filter images, and, overall, edit your presentation the way you like.
Usage
You can create your presentation from a blank canvas, or use pre-designed templates from a library. If you have some ready-made PowerPoint slides, you can import those as well. When you’ve finished editing your presentation with Prezi, you can convert it into video format and use it during your speech or a webinar on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and others.
Output
Web-ready dynamic presentations.
Great for
Prezi is the best interactive presentation software for businesses that have a creative approach. Prezi might also be handy for marketing and sales teams as it lets you track who views the presentation and what most interests them.
4. Mentimeter: “Everybody is Heard”
Rating: 4.5/5 – 39 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Mentimeter is another tool for creating interactive presentations. With this software, you can add quizzes and real-time voting to gather data, and add images and GIFs to make your presentation engaging.
Usage
Mentimeter is a cloud-based tool, meaning all you need to do to start working with it is sign up. Create presentations using templates and themes, quizzes with 13 question types, and insert images and GIFs from integrated free stock images and GIF libraries. Once your presentation is ready, just share a link with your audience.
Output
Well-designed interactive online presentations with real-time response data and its analysis.
Great for
Mentimeter is one of the best interactive presentation tools for gathering feedback-based statistics at companies, schools, and universities.
5. ClassFlow: “Teaching With a Modern Touch”
Rating: 4/5 – 9 reviews (Common Sense)
ClassFlow is a free cloud-based lesson delivery software that lets you design interactive presentations and gauge your students’ progress. ClassFlow is useful for both in-person and distance learning.
Usage
To start building lessons, designing tests, and managing your classes, you need to create an account. Once you do this, all the features, such as interactive widgets, tests, flashcards, and more become available. You can use them to create your interactive presentation and then share it with your students.
Output
In-class, online, or hybrid presentations that provide real-time statistics and can include a reward badge system.
Great for
ClassFlow is the best interactive presentation software for schools and universities that can’t afford a big budget but are eager to enhance their classes and keep their students engaged.
6. SlideDog: “Freedom to Present”
Rating: 4/5 – 13 reviews (G2 Crowd)
SlideDog is an interactive presentation tool with which you can combine PowerPoint and Prezi slides, PDF files, videos, web pages, and more, into a single seamless presentation.
Usage
To create a multimedia presentation, the first thing you need to do is drag files into a playlist pane. This will be your playback order. SlideDog doesn’t just let you combine files from other programs but also offers some interactions such as questionnaires or live chat with the audience. You can create them with this software, add them to the playlist, and share your presentation.
Output
Interactive multimedia presentations that include files in their original formats.
Perfect for
SlideDog is the best interactive presentation software for people who organize meetings, conferences, and other events that involve several speakers with individual materials of different formats.
7. FlowVella: “Apple Application Creation Made Easy”
Rating: 4/5 – 4 reviews (G2 Crowd)
FlowVella is a tool for designing interactive presentations on Apple devices. This software enables you to have a video, an image, text, and more, all together on one slide. FlowVella urges the user to leave traditional linear slides in the past and helps to build an engaging interactive user experience.
Usage
Download the FlowVella app, open it and either start building your presentation from scratch or choose one of the ready-made templates. Easily add files of different formats with a drag-and-drop interface. Once your project is ready, save it on your device. When you need to share the presentation, upload it to the cloud and send its unique URL to your audience.
Output
Interactive online presentations that support smart gestures such as tapping, swiping, and zooming objects.
Great for
FlowVella is one of the best interactive presentation software for exhibitors who need to create content to arrange iPad-based kiosks for events.
8. IntuiFace: “Create Amazing Multi-Touch Applications”
Rating: 4.7/5 – 23 reviews (Capterra)
Intuiface is a powerful tool that converts all your media into interactive content for mobile devices and multi-touch displays. Being a really complex and multifunctional program, Intuiface is an easy-to-use option for people with any level of coding skills, because it is not you who does all the mathematical job of implementing interactivity in your presentation, but the program itself.
Usage
You can start creating your presentation using pre-built templates, by importing from PowerPoint, or a blank canvas. Perhaps, it’s better to start with a pre-built template to understand all the basics. Just choose the appropriate template, drag content objects and drop them onto the scene, and try interacting with the project. Once you get to know all the features that Intuiface provides, it will be simple to create presentations using advanced options that can add even more interactivity to your content.
Output
Interactive presentations with media automatically responsive to tap, swipe, and other touchscreen gestures that are available on any device.
Great for
Intuiface is the best interactive presentation software for those who want to create a “wow effect” on a multi-touch screen at exhibitions, conferences, and other events.
9. Visme: “Translate boring data into beautiful visuals”
Rating: 4.6/5 – 157 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Visme is a cloud-based interactive presentation tool that helps you visualize data, and design infographics, reports, charts, and banners for websites and social media.
Usage
There are a good number of pre-made customizable templates that are divided into 4 categories: Presentations, Infographics, Banner, and Custom projects. Choose the appropriate category and select the template you like. Add interactivity by embedding polls, quizzes, videos, and more. The ready-made presentation can be shared via a link, embedded into a website, or downloaded as a picture or a PDF document.
Output
Visually beautiful interactive presentations that don’t require a lot of time and effort to create, and can be shared both online and offline.
Great for
This is one of the best tools for educators, presenters, and communicators, especially those who prefer teamwork, as Visme lets you organize the project data into folders and provide role-based permissions.
10. Pear Deck
Rating: 4.4/5 – 28 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Pear Deck is a tool that helps you create incredibly beautiful and engaging interactive presentations for your students, track their progress in real-time, and let them answer questions anonymously so they won’t be afraid to give an incorrect answer and appear silly.
Usage
Download and then open the add-in for PowerPoint Online or Google Slides. Create your interactive lesson from a blank canvas, or use one of the templates provided. You can add different assessments, questions with draggable answers, audio, images, videos, and more. Once the presentation is ready, launch it with Pear Deck.
Output
Beautiful interactive presentations that have lots of features to engage your students and to have them feeling safe at your lessons.
Great for
This is the best interactive presentation software for schools, and educators working with children.
11. Genially
Rating: 4.8/5 – 16 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Genially is an online platform that lets you convert presentations on any topic and for any audience into extremely interactive and animated content.
Usage
Choose one of the thousands of templates, or start from a blank canvas. You can fully customize all the templates, add files, add interactivity, and animate objects. The animation in templates is provided automatically, but if you feel like changing it, you can do so freely. When you finish your presentation, you can present it Genially, or download it in HTML, PDF, and JPEG formats.
Output
Highly interactive and animated presentations that can be embedded into your website, or presented in any way you desire.
Great for
Genially is the best interactive presentation tool for people from different professional areas who want to engage their audience by presenting their content dynamically, beautifully, and in a highly interactive manner.
12. Beautiful.ai
Rating: 4.8/5 – 78 reviews (G2 Crowd)
Beautiful.ai is an online platform for creating presentations quickly, with minimal effort. Although interactive features are limited to just three, Beautiful.ai’s main advantage is the fact that the designing process itself is interactive: you place an image and the software automatically sets the right width and height, so the entire slide looks beautiful. It makes it extremely easy to create and edit presentations, letting you focus on revising your speech instead of fixing the image size, several charts, etc.
Usage
Choose the appropriate template and customize it with your images, audio, texts, and other content objects. Try working in a team and see how simple and entertaining it is on this platform. Share your presentation via a link, or export it to PPT.
Output
Effective good-looking presentations that are easy and fun to create.
Great for
This is one of the best software for people who create or edit presentations often and want to spend less time doing that while maintaining their work at a high level of quality. Beautiful.ai might be too limited for educational purposes, as you are not able to add assessments to your presentations with it, but if you need to pitch or show a strategy, or even teach a lesson without evaluating learners’ progress, Beautiful.ai proves effective.
There are a lot of great apps and tools you can use to make powerful and engaging presentations. Take a note of these 7 useful apps for you and your students.
1. ShowMe
Screencasting is a great way for teachers to present materials to their classes. It is simple for students to create their own presentations as well. You can record screen and voice as you write, draw, or annotate an image. An amazing feature also captured the action of writers on digital whiteboards, as well as your voice while you write. The app is free and a great choice for Apple users.
2. Canva
Visual design is an important aspect of a great presentation. You can customize your slide designs with Canva. You can make calendars, posters, cards, and more – which can be useful for your presentation. There’s an iPad app that has a presentation slide option where you can also adjust custom dimensions. It has a cool repository of images, shapes, backgrounds, and text options you can choose to customize your presentation.
3. Haiku Deck
Another student-friendly app is the Haiku Deck, which lets you create minimalist presentation slides with a photo background and text. The app has a rich gallery of images to choose from. You can also upload your own photos. If you want to create a presentation that focuses on images, rather than text, Haiku Deck is the perfect tool for you. You can share teaching points or give short writing prompts to your students using this presentation app.
4. Nearpod
A fantastic BYOD (bring your own device) resource for educators is the Nearpod. You can design your own interactive presentation and your students can view it on their iPads. Elements such as quiz polls or drawing a response, students can interact with your presentations.
5. Keynote
Choose from dozens of themes to set the tone of your presentation with Keynote. You can add graphics, layer images, and customize the font of the text in every slide. You can also add animation and transitions, as well as include the presenter’s notes. What’s even more amazing is that it’s free for iPad users.
6. Prezi
Prezi is an app that uses a single canvas instead of slides. All information goes on one page instead of separate slides. Pathways are options to connect and arrange your presentation in your desired order. Pre-made presentations are also included among the features of this app, you can easily explore them.
7. SnapGuide
Want to create simple, how-to presentations for your class? SnapGuide is a free app for you. You can create your own multi-step guides that include text, images, and video. You can take pictures or videos straight from your iPad camera or import them from your camera roll. You can present instructions, directions, or expectations to your class, and it’s simple enough for students to create their own.
Best Classroom Tools for Presentations and Slideshows
Many students dread presenting or struggle to structure and communicate their ideas successfully. These interactive presentation and slideshow apps and websites give them tools to make their work fun, engaging, and interesting. Students can create screencasts to teach a topic to the class, use a design tool to craft sleek graphics, or record entertaining animations. Whether it’s for practice or to reach an authentic audience, students can demonstrate their learning and gain valuable skills for college and career. There are also some great options for teachers to create lessons with slick multimedia and interactive elements such as video, audio, and embedded assessments. 
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Nearpod
Engage and assess students with media, videos, and interactive slides
Bottom line: This is a great tool with a vast content library, and teacher- or student-paced learning can unlock the potential of 1-to-1 environments.Grades: K–12 Price: Free, Paid to Get it now See full review
Screencast-O-Matic
Create and edit sophisticated screencasts without breaking the bank
Bottom line: This is the most flexible screencasting tool, but it requires patience — and perhaps a subscription — to unlock all of its possibilities.Grades: 1–12 Price: Free, Paid Visit website See full review
Shadow Puppet Edu
Resource-rich video slideshow maker a gem for a variety of classrooms
Bottom line: Easy-to-use free tool is a must-have for elementary classrooms; just keep an eye on sharing and privacy.Grades: 2–12 Price: FreeGet it now See full review
Buncee for Education
Easy-to-use slideshow tool offers customization, promotes creativity
Bottom line: With the right guidance, the abundance of design features makes creating dynamic presentations a breeze.Grades: 3–12 Price: Free, Paid Visit website See full review
Explain Everything Whiteboard
Powerhouse tool for creating stellar multimedia presentations
Bottom line: Teachers and students can make dynamic presentations that involve different types of media in this innovative, fun app.Grades: 3–12 Price: Free to try, Paid to Get it now See full review
LessonUp
Flexible interactive presentation tool engages kids at school and home
Bottom line: LessonUp is for teachers who like designing unique lessons to reach every learner.Grades: 3–12 Price: Free, Free to try, Paid Visit website See full review
Loom
Create, present, and assess with effortless interactive screencasts
Bottom line: This intuitive tool is excellent for recording and responding to screencasts of any length.Grades: Pre-K–12 Price: Free Visit website See full review
Pear Deck
Interactive slideshows offer a variety of ways to engage and assess
Bottom line: This is an appealing platform that can really ramp up engagement around formative assessment.Grades: 3–12 Price: Free, Paid Visit website See full review
Screencastify
The easy screen-recording tool facilitates outside-the-box instruction
Bottom line: This is an instructional tool that could reinvent classroom workflow, especially for classrooms in the Google ecosystem.Grades: 3–12 Price: Free, Paid Visit website See full review
Canva
Create snazzy designs in seconds with a flexible, cloud-based tool
Bottom line: With stable internet access and enough time to get started, this is a flexible, accessible way to create beautiful designs in your classroom.Grades: 4–12 Price: Free, Paid to Get it now See full review
ClassFlow
Robust lesson creation and delivery tool helps with assessment
Bottom line: In the hands of a determined teacher, this platform’s useful suite of tools can support learning experiences that move from instruction to assessment and back.Grades: 4–12 Price: Free Visit website See full review
Vmaker
Simple, easy screencast creator with room to grow
Bottom line: This is a competitive entrant into the screencasting field and leans into ease-of-use and fewer restrictions vs. tons of features.Grades: 4–12 Price: Free, Paid Visit website See full review
Keynote
A simple, elegant tool for creating presentations on mobile devices
Bottom line: Provides a solid mobile version of Apple’s presentation app.Grades: 6–12 Price: FreeGet it now See full review
Prezi Next
Multimedia presentation tool features useful templates and 3D zoom
Bottom line: With its zoom in and out capabilities, Prezi helps teachers and students go beyond traditional slideshows to put important content front and center.Grades: 6–12 Price: Free, Free to try, Paid Visit website See full review
Sutori
Build timelines, embed media with cool storytelling tool
Bottom line: With a super-simple design and tons of flexible features, this is an appealing and intuitive way for teachers and students to organize and share class content.Grades: 6–12 Price: Free, Paid Visit website See full review
Sway
Create dynamic visual presentations on a flexible storytelling platform
Bottom line: A seamless transition from design to presentation makes Sway a great fit for presenting carefully curated content.Grades: 6–12 Price: Free Visit website See full review
Animoto
Create snazzy video slideshows with simple, flexible features
Bottom line: Slick music videos and slideshows are easy to make, but students need more controls to personalize them.Grades: 7–12 Price: Free, Free to try, Paid Visit website See full review
Adobe Spark
Super-flexible design tool for crafting fab images, videos, and sites
Bottom line: This one-stop-shop for creating sleek graphics, web stories, and animated videos is incredibly easy to use and challenges students to think critically about visual presentation.Grades: 6–12 Price: Free, Free to try Visit website See full review
Artsteps
The immersive virtual exhibit tool is attractive and versatile but fussy
Bottom line: For teachers and students who can invest the time, Artsteps provides a compelling, free option for presenting and exploring images and audio of any kind.Grades: 6–12 Price: FreeVisit website See full review
Haiku Deck
Limited text and high-impact visuals help focus presentations
Bottom line: Haiku Deck doesn’t teach the essentials of good presentations, but it’s great for users who already know the basics.Grades: 8–12 Price: Free to try, Paid Visit website See full review
TouchCast Studio
The cool tool takes videos to the next level
Bottom line: It’s a creative tool for teachers to make interactive video content and for students to present information, but teachers should monitor use.Grades: 6–12 Price: Free Get it now See full review
Emaze
The cool tool lets kids collaborate online, create slick presentations
Bottom line: Polished, sleek presentations give kids great opportunities to present, but watch out for privacy and safety concerns.Grades: 9–12 Price: Free, Paid
Conclusion
Teachers are always looking for new tools to help make their classes more interactive. Teachers are often required to make presentations, or release powerpoints to students. They are also often asked to create games, websites, or other digital elements which are used in the classroom. Finding new tools is essential for teachers along with knowing how to utilize them.