My own app · revelaslides.com

Revela: presentations for teaching

An editor that runs in the browser: the class answers from their phones by scanning a QR code, and 3D models turn while you explain them. It opens the .pptx files you already have, and there is nothing to install on the school computers.

Open Revela View the code
The Revela editor with a science presentation open: a 3D human figure on the slide and the strip of nine slides on the left

Why I ended up writing a presentation editor

I was teaching with three windows at once: the slides, a polling service in another tab and, when something had to be shown from every side, a 3D viewer that did not fit in any slide. Switching windows halfway through an explanation breaks the rhythm, and the classroom computer belongs to the school: Windows, locked down, no permission to install anything.

Revela puts the three inside the same file and runs in the browser. What you prepare at home opens in the classroom with nothing to install and no account to create.

The editor, with one of the 170 sample presentations open.

What changes in the classroom

The class answers

Eleven kinds of activity — choice, word cloud, quiz, ordering, matching, labelling — each with its countdown. You project a QR code and they answer from their phones.

What a front view cannot show

3D models inside the slide that turn and animate. A part or an organ can be shown from wherever it needs to be, not from whatever photo you had.

Nothing to install

It runs in the browser. In a classroom with locked-down machines, that is the difference between using it and not using it.

What you already have still works

It imports .pptx and .odp, and exports to PDF, images, video and web. No need to redo ten years of material.

The QR code is the part you notice most

One question on the screen and thirty phones answering at once changes what happens in the room: you see who has understood it before moving on, and the ones who never put their hand up answer too.

The audience answers by scanning the code, from their phone browser. There is a countdown and a classroom mode for projecting.

The eleven poll types, with their countdown and classroom mode.

Revela poll catalogue: the eleven activity types and the minute-and-a-half countdown

What is inside

In numbers, which is how you check it:

There are two editions

The open edition has its code published and can be served anywhere you like: a school that would rather not depend on anyone hosts it itself. The official one, at revelaslides.com, has a free version and a Pro one with what the cloud needs.

Getting started asks for no account: you open it and use it.

fmesasc.github.io/revela View the code

Want to try it?

To see what it is about in thirty seconds, open it and load one of the sample presentations from the “Education” category.

Open Revela