Genially is a multifunctional platform for creating interactive content. It can be presentations and entire slide courses, infographics, timelines, quizzes, games, interactive images and even branching quests. Genially can also be used to quickly and easily make any element interactive or animated: a picture, icon, button, and so on.

Numerous templates are available for each format, in which all design elements can be edited. If the available templates are not enough, you can use a blank sheet to place any content you want on it.
The platform is available to users from Russia without restrictions. It has a free plan that offers:

• hundreds of templates;
• all interactive elements and animations;
• upload of images, PDFs, PowerPoint and Google Presentations;
• 1 GB of cloud storage space for created materials;
• AI-assisted background removal from images.

On paid tariffs premium templates and some additional functions are available - for example, uploading audio files from your computer or publishing materials with access only by link (on the free tariff all published materials are indexed in search engines).
The interface is in English, but it is not difficult to understand, and in case of difficulties the automatic translation of the page in the browser will help.

The service will be useful for everyone who creates training materials for distance and blended learning: course developers, corporate training specialists, teachers. And since it is free of charge and easy to use, it can be recommended to pupils and students, for example, for creative assignments and presentation of their projects.

How to get on the platform
First of all, let's create an account. On the Genially homepage, click on the Sign Up button and the platform will prompt the user to choose the most appropriate role: Professional, Teacher or Student. This seems to only affect personalized template recommendations. For example, if you want the platform to offer primarily templates for creating educational content, you should choose "Teacher" - even if you don't teach children, but, say, as an expert on a topic, you're creating a course for colleagues. For "Professional" Genially will select templates for resumes, portfolios, corporate reports, and so on. However, the division is very conditional, as all free templates and functions are available regardless of the chosen role.

The easiest way to create an account is through your Google account, but you can also sign up simply by email - you will receive a confirmation email and you will need to click on the attached link. After that, the platform will ask you a couple more questions to clarify your field of work or the level of education you're working at - you can choose either option.
After completing registration, the user gets to his/her personal account. All created materials are stored here, which can be edited or published immediately.

On the free plan, there are three options available to us in the side menu:

• Templates opens the library of templates. The Create genially block from the main page of one’s personal account leads there as well.
• Inspiration shows a collection of materials created by other users. Content based on premium templates is marked with a star icon - on the free plan such resources can only be viewed. There is also an icon with a circle of arrows - it means that the material can be copied to your library and used as a template, i.e. freely edited and published. If there are no icons, the content is available for everyone to use (for example, you can embed it on your site), but not to edit.
• Settings - account settings, where you can see, for example, how much free storage space you have left.

The purple Create genially button is located below user’s name. It opens a small menu:

• From a template again leads to the template library.
• Blank creation allows you to start with a blank page, setting its size and aspect ratio.
• From a team template is a premium option for those who share Genially workspace with colleagues.
• Import - uploads PDFs, presentations (up to 100 MB) and images (up to 5 MB) to the platform, and then you can add interactive elements to them.

Genially templates
Templates from the Genially library are various types of visual interactive content, divided into categories and subcategories. Within each subcategory, templates differ in terms of display format (e.g. designed for viewing on large and mobile screens) and visual design. Templates can also be combined with each other - for example, you can add a quiz and a timeline to your presentation.
By default, the platform shows all templates, including premium ones. On the free plan it makes sense to filter only the available options - to do this, click on the name of a category, click on the funnel icon on the right and uncheck the Premium option. Here you can also narrow down the selection to see templates intended for educational (Education) or corporate (Corporate) purposes or not falling into any of these categories (Others).

Clicking on a template opens a preview window - it is also interactive, so the user can test all the mechanics used. Clicking on the icon with a pointing finger will highlight clickable elements, and the icon with a palm - those that can be dragged. Also on the template card there are tags, they will help to find similar variants.
For some templates a choice of color scheme is available (remember that regardless of this you can change the design yourself). Finally, the heart icon saves the template to your favorites, and the Use this template button copies it to your personal account for further use.

So, here are the types of content you can quickly create with templates:

Games and challenges
The first subcategory, called Games, contains everything from "Put words or objects in the right order", "Fill in the blanks", "Match words with pictures" and Sudoku puzzles to purely entertaining games. Among the latter are "Battleship", "Hangman", "Tic-tac-toe" and wandering games, in which you need to roll a virtual die and move around the cells.

The second subcategory is Escape games. These are "room escape" type quests, where the user solves problems and puzzles in a limited game space in search of objects or clues to "escape" - for example, to find the code to a locked door.
Genially offers many variations of such quests, varying in theme, and all of them are beautifully illustrated. For younger students, for example, there are farm or underwater quests with a cartoon style setting. Older and even adult students may be drawn to exploring a fantasy dungeon with skeletons guarding treasure, a detective investigation or the return of lost works of art to a museum.

The last game subcategory is the Branching scenario. With this format, you can create an interactive story that evolves based on the learner's decisions and leads to a particular outcome. Instead of automatic scoring, here you need to customize which slide will lead to which answer choice, and carefully consider possible routes.
There are only four free templates in this category, and one of them is more of an infographic. The layout of the templates is very modest, and this may not be bright enough if you are creating a children's branching quest. However, nothing prevents you from taking the structure of the slides as a basis, and design it in your own way. The screenshot below shows the links between the slides in one of these templates.

By the way, Genially templates are very user-friendly in this sense - if they contain mechanics or unique elements that are not obvious when viewing them (e.g. illustrations with objects and characters), there will often be an auxiliary slide at the end with a diagram or resources used. So it's easy to look up the structure of a scenario or copy pictures to use on your own for your own tasks.

Quizzes and forms (quizzes and surveys)
Four types of quizzes are available on the free plan: choosing one or more answer options, True or False format, choosing the correct image, and putting the options in order. However, on the free tariff Genially quizzes are not suitable for serious control of students' knowledge - collection and analysis of data on results are available only for premium users. In the process of passing the quiz, the student will see the correct and incorrect answers (unless this option is disabled in the settings), at the end - the points earned, and can also download them in PDF format. For the same reason, the subcategory with surveys is practically useless for teachers - the answers of participants simply cannot be saved for analysis. Therefore, both quizzes and surveys on the platform are activities for synchronous classes, used for warming up, engaging and consolidating the material, as well as tasks for self-checking.
Quiz templates are available to suit all tastes, from the most minimalist to Art Deco or Greek ceramic painting. You can also choose whether you want it to be held on a computer or on a smartphone - they differ in orientation (horizontal or vertical).

Presentations
This is the basic format for content created in Genially. Each template is a multi-page set of slides in the same style, but with a variety of different layouts. In addition to text, they can contain images, audio and video, interactive elements such as pop-ups and clickable buttons, and animations.
When choosing a particular template, the user is offered to copy all slides from the set or individual slides. The platform also allows combining slides from different templates.

Courses
This section has several subcategories with different types of materials. The templates in the subcategory, which is also called Courses, are just for creating online slide-based courses. These are actually the same presentations, but structured in a special way. They are divided into modules, have slides for educational goals and results, for the main content and for testing knowledge (but we remind you that there are difficulties with this on the free tariff).
In the Microlearning subcategory, the templates are designed for educational content of small volume and for viewing on smartphones.
Learning Unit templates (a concept close to our term ‘curriculum’) are designed to help educators plan the learning process - they record objectives and planned outcomes, topics and modules, necessary resources and materials, practical tasks, assessment methods, and so on.
The Training resources subcategory contains planners and task trackers, portfolio and certificate templates, calendars and other support materials. School resources are roughly the same, but here you can also find educational materials for direct use in the classroom, such as infographics of the life cycle of plants and various types of world maps.

Infographics
This section also has five subcategories. Interactive images templates help to place interaction points on a static picture or gif - when you click on them, windows with additional information pop up, audio or video is switched on, another picture opens. In general, you don't need a special template for this - you can easily do it from scratch in the Genially editor.
The Timelines subcategory contains templates for creating a timeline - a way to visually display events in a chronological sequence. For example, the life story of a famous person, stages of development of a scientific theory, steps of work on a training project. Also such materials are called ribbons of time. Templates are very diverse in design, so you can find a suitable one for visualising any processes. The same applies to Infographics templates - these are almost ready-made visual materials on a variety of topics, to which you only need to add your text. And of course, just like all other materials in Genially, timelines and infographics can have interactive elements and animations if desired.

The Diagrams subcategory offers templates for data visualisation. On the free plan, there are several types of simple diagrams (line, pie, column) combined with infographics, but more formats are available to all users in the editor. It also contains tools used in product and process management, such as templates for SWOT analysis and Five Why method, Ishikawa diagram and Effort-Impact matrix.
And Interactive cards contain flip card templates, animated cards and invitations for any occasion.

Digital publishing
The name of the section is not the most obvious one, because it contains templates for various purposes. Microsites are templates for creating resumes, school and university timetables, as well as portfolios, small product catalogues, brandbooks and lendings. Switching between slides they can be standard, ‘left-to-right’, or only by clicking on interactive elements (as on conventional sites). However, for materials of any format you can choose any navigation method or a combination of them.
Approximately the same content can be created using templates from the subcategory Catalogs and brochures, only here the presentations are larger and structured accordingly - for example, at the beginning there is a special slide for navigation through the content. Finally, the Reports subcategory contains presentations for corporate reports - they include charts and infographics and have more space for text and other data than the previous subcategories.

Videos
These are actually presentation templates too, but with smoothly animated transitions, and they play themselves instead of switching slides. The same transitions in the editor can be set up for any presentation created from any template or even uploaded as a PPTX file.
So, there are only two sections left in the library - Team templates with team templates, which are not available on the free plan, and Blank creation, which means creating content from scratch. So now let's learn what the Genially editor is capable of - we work in it whenever we create content from a blank page or change a template.

How to create your unique material in Genially using the editor tools
When creating a non-template material, you first need to define its shape and size. You can set the resolution and aspect ratio of your slide manually, or you can choose one of the available options:

• Landscape - this is a 16:9 aspect ratio, standard for modern laptop displays. Accordingly, it is best suited for courses and presentations designed to be viewed on a wide screen rather than a mobile screen.
• Mobile - the aspect ratio is 9:16, i.e. the image has a vertical orientation and is intended for viewing on a smartphone.
• Infographics - a format for creating content that the user scrolls down from top to bottom. As the name suggests, the 1:2 aspect ratio is usually suitable for vertical infographics.
• Square - a square format for flip cards and postcards.

The selected format is applied to all pages of the material you are creating. However, you can change it at any time - for example, if you decide that square slides work better than rectangular slides for your idea.
At the bottom of the desktop, next to the Add page buttons, the bin icon for deleting a selected slide, the display scale switches, and the arrows for selecting pages, there are three more icons. The first two of them - Canvas, a rectangle with dots, and Navigation, two rectangles with arrows - open the same menu.

The Canvas tab contains the same size and aspect ratio settings. The Transitions tab opens only if there is already more than one slide in the material - here you can set up transition animations between slides. The Apply to all slides button allows you to apply the selected animation to all slides, but there's nothing stopping you from customising a specific animation for each slide. For customisation, you need to select Pages from the side menu. The platform will display a list of all slides, and you will see a magic wand icon next to each slide - if you click on it, the transition animation menu will open.
On the Navigation tab, choose how the user interacts with the material. In Standard, you can switch slides with arrows, as in any presentation. Video implies that the content is played automatically, without user action. Finally, Microsite removes the navigation arrows from the slides - you interact with the material only through interactive links, buttons, and so on.

Clicking on the palette icon (Document colours), located to the right of the other icons at the bottom, opens the colour scheme settings. The idea is that the content creator chooses three main colours for the material, which he or she assigns to certain design elements. And if you want to change them later, you can do it right here in the menu, and the changes will be automatically applied to the corresponding elements. However, on the free tariff you will not be able to set the main colours yourself - you can only choose one of 12 ready-made sets. Let us remind you that you can change the colours of almost any elements at your own discretion.
You should also pay attention to the Add background audio button right above the slide you are editing. It opens a tool to record an audio file via your device's microphone or to download the audio via a link. Premium users can also upload audio files from their computer. The selected track will play in the background while you are viewing the whole material - so you can't, for example, choose your own music for different slides of the same presentation.
Now that we have learnt about slide settings, let's take a look at the tools Genially editor offers. They are all located in the side menu on the left.

Text
Genially offers the use of a customised set of header, subheaders and plain text, matched in proportions. There are bulleted and numbered lists, as well as a couple of dozen combinations of header and subheader in different fonts.

In any case, the font headset, size and colour can be changed. There are also options like text transparency and shadow settings, letter and line spacing, upper and lower case.

Image
Genially has a built-in library of images, not only static images, but also gifs. If you can't find suitable images and photos on the platform itself, you can easily upload them, but the size of each file should not exceed 5 MB.
The image placed on the slide can be immediately edited - resized, cropped, made transparent, or framed. There are also special functions - for example, the icon with stars removes the background on the image with the help of AI, and the icon with a palm makes the image draggable in the viewing mode (this option is useful for relevant tasks and games).

Resources
With this tool you can add ready-made icons, geometric shapes, lines and arrows, vector illustrations with characters to your slides. If you want, you can also drag and drop them when viewing the material, if you switch the corresponding option using the palm icon. All elements, except for coloured illustrations, can be recoloured, as well as their transparency and arrangement by layers can be adjusted in any case.
Tools for creating a variety of charts and graphs are also found here. When you put any diagram, chart, etc., a table will open, which you need to fill with data - add them manually or paste them from another document. There are also templates of regular tables to put on the slide.

Interactive elements
Probably the most interesting Genially tool that can be used to make even the most ordinary presentation interactive. For example, an interactive element can be a pop-up window (Window) - essentially a new slide that will open when you click on a button or icon. There are several templates for such windows, each of which is designed for one or another type of content: for voluminous text, a combination of text and picture, a YouTube video, several images, and so on.slide.

Tooltip - a tooltip or note. When the user clicks on the button, a small window will appear on the same slide. You can place text, image, table or video on the tooltip.
Under Audio, you can add a soundtrack to the slide, either recorded here or downloaded from a link that is enabled by clicking on it. And also a whole gallery of images (Gallery) - the images will switch automatically or by clicking on the arrows, you can also add captions to them.
The Link and Go to page add elements to the slide, which when clicked open an external internet resource or the selected slide respectively.
For games and exercises, you can use embedded timers and stopwatches, a virtual die or coin to toss, and a randomiser that, when clicked, opens a random picture from a set of images. One type of randomiser is a treasure chest that, when clicked, will reveal its contents (such as a scroll, potion or extra ‘life’ for the player).
The editor has many different kinds of buttons to which interactive elements can be attached, and any area of the slide can be made interactive by simply selecting it with the mouse (using the Interactive area tool).

Interactive questions
Here are the test questions - the same four types available in the corresponding free templates, i.e. answer choice, True or False, putting items in order and choosing the correct image. For any task, you can turn on a timer, set up feedback for correct solutions and errors, and direct the user to a particular slide after the answer.

Smartblocks
This tool contains templates for diagrams, charts and tables, timelines, maps and galleries. They are very similar to those contained in the main template library, but while there most of them are themed, here they are standard and minimalistic.
It is important to consider that some of them consist of multiple visual elements that are edited independently. At the same time, the actual charts and graphs function as they should - that is, they display data from the associated tables. To change or add data, you need to select the corresponding object (for example, a pie chart) by clicking on it and then click on the pencil icon that appears above it. After editing the data, all elements of the template can be merged - to do this, select the area they occupy with the mouse and click on the icon with connected dots. After that they will be considered as one object, which is much more convenient to move.

Insert
The tool adds media content to the page: audio, video, images, third-party resources via a link. Videos can be uploaded from Google Drive or via a link, while audio on the free plan can only be recorded via microphone or uploaded via a link. Supported third-party resources that are embedded with a link or code include almost any content from Google services (maps, documents, tables, forms) and PDF documents.

Background
Genially allows you to customise both the slide space itself (Canvas) and the background on which it is placed (Base). For example, in the screenshot below, the Base is dark blue and the slide itself is white. The colour or background image of the slides can be the same for all slides or it can be different for each slide. The background is the same for the entire document, and it will be displayed depending on how much of the user's screen the material occupies. For example, if it's a square card, the base will be visible beyond its borders on both computers and smartphones. And if it is, say, a vertically orientated page, the base will be displayed only on computers, while on smartphones the page will occupy the entire screen.
For both the slide background and the base, you can adjust the colour, select an image from the built-in library, and upload your own picture.

How to add animations to your slides
Another great feature of Genially, besides adding interactivity, is animations, which can also be customised for any element on the page. All you need to do is click on it with your mouse and then click on the comet icon. Important: if you want to fully animate an object consisting of several elements (for example, a timeline or a graph), you need to merge them first.

Clicking on the comet icon will open the animation menu. First you need to decide on its type - it depends on the conditions in which the animation will be played:

• Automatic - such animation is played independently of the user's actions. You can animate the appearance of the object on the slide (Entrance) and its disappearance (Exit), as well as add a constant movement (Continuous). Each of these subcategories has its own set of animations. For example, when an object appears, it falls from above or gradually appears, when it disappears, it rolls off the screen or blurs to invisibility. And if you choose constant motion, it can sway like on waves or pulsate. The start time in seconds and animation speed can be adjusted for appearance and disappearance.
• Interactive - this animation starts when the user moves the mouse pointer over the object (Hover mouse) or clicks on it (Click). Accordingly, it makes sense to add such animations to interactive elements to tell the user what objects he can interact with. For example, a picture that needs to be moved can shake when the mouse is hovered over, and a button that opens a hint in a game can pulse.

Any effects and their combinations are displayed on the object in real time, which allows you to ‘try on’ all variants in the editor and choose the most suitable one without going to the preview mode.

How to share finished content
Once you've finished creating your content, it's a good idea to save your last changes just in case (although Genially saves them automatically from time to time). To do this, click on the cloud icon at the top left of the screen - when it shows a tick instead of an ellipsis, the saving is complete.
Then it's worth checking how your content will be seen by users - there's a preview mode for this, which opens by clicking on the eye icon at the top right, next to your avatar. In this mode, you can check the display of your content on both large screens and mobile phones.
And if everything is satisfactory, it's time to publish your content. At the top, next to the document title field, there is a pencil icon labelled Draft, which means that only you can see your content now.

When clicking on Draft, select Public from the menu to open the publishing menu. The Display tab has several display options:

• Share genially allows all users to share your material on social networks, embed it in their blogs and websites.
• Full screen enables full screen mode, where the material adapts to the width and height of the user's screen.
• Interactivity indicator adds thumb icons to all clickable elements - like in Genially itself when previewing templates.
• Zoom - enables the ability to zoom in on content when viewing.
• Draggable elements indicator - adds palm icons to all draggable elements.
• Paint on genially - allows users to draw on top of material pages by selecting the colour and thickness of the lines. Changes will not be saved in the material itself.

Here you can also choose the colour of pop-ups - light or dark.

On the Privacy tab in free mode, there is only one main option - to make the material public. It will have a permanent URL and the content can be found through search engines if desired.
If you enable the Reusable option, other users will be able to use your material as a template to create their own content.
You can also add a Title to this tab, if you have not done so before, and a short Description.

The Activity tab is not available on the free plan - these are settings for analytics of user interaction with content.
Click on the All set button and Genially will offer to immediately open the material for presentation in a new window (Present) or share it with other users (Share).

There are several options here, the main ones among them are these:

• Link gives a direct link to view the content on Genially.
• Insert helps to embed the material into a blog, website or LMS. There are two types of code for this. Iframe is the most common option that works in most browsers. All content, including popups, will be within the boundaries of the embedded material. Script works a little differently, and as the creators explain, some elements may extend outside the document. They themselves recommend using Iframe.

There is also a Social networks option, which publishes the material as a post on social media, and Others to share the document with students in Google Classroom or with colleagues in Microsoft Teams, but they are not very relevant to Russian users.
And only for premium users is the Download function available to save content as a PDF for printing, an HTML document, an image or a video for offline viewing.