We all use PowerPoint to create and deliver lectures and for student presentations. But PPT lacks one major feature…collaboration. Google Slides, part of our Google Apps for Education, is a PowerPoint-like presentation application that has that collaboration piece, making it more useful in an academic environment.
Here are six reasons you should be using Google Slides instead of PowerPoint.
- Consistency — Your presentations look and act the same way on all computers. Have you ever created a presentation or lecture on your office computer only to have it look or behave differently on the teacher station in the classroom? With Google Slides, all fonts, images, videos, animations etc. are stored online (in the cloud) so your lectures/presentations will look the same on every computer.
- Easy Access — Since both the application and the presentations are saved in Google Drive, it’s easy to access and work on them from any computer or mobile device. Just log into drive.google.com and you have access to all your presentations, documents and spreadsheets.
- Backchannel for Questions — Google Slides has a new Audience Q&A feature which allows your students/audience to ask questions during the presentation. When activated a web address is automatically added to to the top of each slide allowing the students to ask their questions or make comments.
- Tracking Work in Group Presentations — faculty love group presentations but hate not knowing who did what. Google Slides has a Revision History section (File > See Revision History) that shows all changes made to the presentation along with who made them. This is a great way to hold students accountable for a collaborative project. Because it’s web-based, all students in the group can actively create and edit content within the same presentation at the same time.
- Easy Sharing — With one easy trick you can share your lecture presentations so that the students can copy it into their Google Drive and then take notes directly in the presentation Notes area.
- Open your presentation and click the blue SHARE button
- Click GET SHAREABLE LINK and click COPY LINK
- Now paste that link either in OAKS or an email to our students BUT before sending it make one minor change. At the end of the link change the word edit to copy ex. edit?usp=sharing /copy?usp=sharing
- Efficient In-class Group Work — Create one blank Google Slides presentation and share it with your class. During the group work each group with create their own slide(s) with their contributions. At the end of class you have only one file you have to look at and all the groups have access to each other’s contributions. This also makes it easy to bring the presentation up in class to discuss the group findings.
