The Pear Deck add-on is very popular amongst teachers. It allows them to bring interactive elements into their Google Slides presentation. Check out the video above to get a better sense of what Pear Deck offers and whether or not it is right for you.
Tag: Google Slides
Presenting a slideshow? Keep it brief
It is back to school which means there are a lot of PowerPoints, Keynotes, Google Slide shows that are going to be presented to students, parents and staff. I’ve got some tips for making yours better than the most.
Keep it short
The quote for good old Bill Shakespeare sums it up nicely. Present your points clearly, concisely and move on. Don’t give “humorous” anecdotes or stories that have nothing to do with your presentation. Also, don’t think you need to tell your audience everything that is going on. Find the major talking points and focus on those.
The Rule of Six
This is more of a guideline than a rule. It basically says no more than 6 words per title or bullet point and no more than 6 bullet points per slide. I use this because if I find myself going past the 6 words in a bullet point then this guideline forces me to rethink what I’ve written. If I can’t fit it on the bullet point in less than 6 words then it needs another bullet point. If I can’t explain it in 6 bullet points than I need another slide.
No sentences
There are exceptions here (quotes, mission statements, etc.), but I avoid sentences on a presentation like a Midwestern Pothole. I want to keep it to a word or just a few words. I almost never hit the 6 word limit. I want to explain the topic to them. If I am saying everything that is on the slide, then why am I up there wasting these people’s time? My audiences are all educated and can read and think for themselves.
Almost no animations/transitions
I used to love these damn things. I found it fun to apply new animations and transitions to slideshows just to see what can be done. The bottom line is that this slows down your presentation and they are usually unnecessary. It may only be a combined time of 5-10 extra seconds, but that might be enough time for audience to slump back in their chairs and start to tune you out.
If you use these animations all the time whatever the animations where there to emphasize is lost because everything has an animation. Avoid them.
Don’t read your slides
Again, maybe you are emphasizing a point like the school’s mission statement or a quote from a person, but typically don’t read your damn slides! The people watching your presentation are educated and can read themselves, they don’t need you to read it to them.
Also, you shouldn’t have that info in a paragraph or collection of sentences in the first place. If you do have a long string of words up, you don’t need to read it. Maybe wait in silence for a few seconds while the audience has a chance to read it and then further expound upon that topic or move on.
Templates and Color
When making a presentation you often have quite a few templates you can chose from and most of them look great on your computer screen. The problem comes when it shines through an aging projector who may not be as bright or the colors may not be as accurate.
I ran into this last week. I had an organizational chart that showed current projects that had not been started, started and completed. The projector did not convey those colors accurately so all the projects looked the same color. It was a bit of a fail.
If you have a really colorful template or specific colors used on text be cautious! I am making more and more of my presentations with a plain white background and black text. Even if the color goes out due to a bad VGA cord, my presentation will still be perfectly viewable.
Fonts
Chose fonts based on your audience. Kindergartners may like Comic Sans, but presenting to their parents is not really appropriate. It simply doesn’t look professional. Also stick with the same font throughout your presentation.
Rehearse
The last bit of advice I have is to rehearse! Practice it early and often. Even if it is just you in your office, bedroom, car – practice. You may feel silly at first but when you present it your audience will appreciate it. Through rehearsing you gain more and more understanding of what it is you want to say and how you want to say it. You also find that your slideshow does not reflect all the points you want to talk about and you often end up revising it. This will also give you more confidence when presenting because you know the presentation so well.
This practice also makes you extremely adaptable for unforeseen events. Last week, a presenter found herself with less time for one reason or another. She did not have time to go through her entire presentation so she had to figure out, on the fly, what she was going to skip and what she was going to highlight. Rehearsing may have made those choices a little easier for her and made her presentation go a little smoother. Again, not her fault finding herself in that situation but rehearsing could have smoothed out the tough spots.
Linking Google Slides
I had teacher walk into the IT office with a good question. She wanted to make a slideshow about a topic and have each student in her room create one slide to add to the slideshow. Here is what you need to know.
- She is using Google Slides
- This is 4th Grade
- She didn’t want students modifying or messing around with other slides
- 4th grades don’t always make “wise” choices
OK – now you are caught up and messing around here is what we stumbled upon. I don’t think this is a new feature but it was one that I was not aware of. Before we get to the solution here is what first sprung into our minds.
One Slideshow
She would have one slideshow on her Google account and she would share it with one or two at a time and then once their slide was done, she would take away their permissions and assign new students. Or she could just let them work on a computer that is signed into her account under her supervision as they directly added it with no sharing at all.
Obviously this is extremely cumbersome and not very manageable unless you were dealing with 4–6 students, so this would not work
Loads of slideshows and some manual labor
Each student would make their own and then they would share it with her. She would then cue up a bunch of different slide shows to show or she would re-create the slides on her own slideshow.
Again, lots of work and not very practical. I can hear you, the good reader, screaming at the screen now about copy and pasting.
The best solution
So the teacher make one slideshow to rule them all. Then each student makes their own and shares it with her. She will then copy and paste the slide(s) necessary from the student slideshow to the teacher slideshow. So check out the overly simplistic screenshots below.
So, what our teacher needs to do is copy the slide from the thumbnail view. Click the thumbnail and then copy it (ctrl+c or cmd+c or right click and select copy). Then once it is copied go to the teacher slideshow and paste it in the thumbnail area. When you do this, you will see an option to link the slide or not to link the slide.
I went ahead and chose to link the slides. When I do this this little icon shows up on that particular slide on the teacher slideshow.
Now here is why this is cool. Let’s say Student #1 decides to add a little more info. Maybe a picture in this case.
Now let’s check back with the teacher’s slideshow and see what has changed.
As you can see – very little has changed, but when you look at Student #1’s slide you will see that it says UPDATE near the top right hand corner.
So when the teacher clicks it the slide will update with the latest changes. Very, very cool.
Now, let’s say a fourth grader shares this with their “best” friend who decides it would be hilarious to replace the computer picture with a funny picture and then the teacher hits update. All the teacher needs to do is hit Undo (ctrl+z or cmd+z or hit the Undo button) and the latest changes will be undone. Simple as that.
So, if you’re ever in this situation of making a single slideshow based and want the class to contribute then give this a go. It seems to work very well.
Technology in the Classroom 