Do you use PowerPoint in your classroom? Have you ever misplaced your flash drive with your presentations? Do you share your presentations in Blackboard? This has been my case. I have recently moved to Google Slides and I am not looking back. Here are the many reasons I think you should move to Google Slides:

Collaboration

Perhaps the number one reason for moving to Google Slides is its collaborative nature. It is possible to work on the same slide deck at the same time with others at a distance. No longer will students have to send a presentation from one team member to another.

As a class activity, you could have all of your students building out a slide deck at the same time.

Read more:

• 5 Reasons to Replace PowerPoint with Google Slides | Technology and Learning
• Google Slides: Whole Class Presentation

Easy to Share

You can easily share your presentation with a simple URL. You do not have to find a way to upload it to a webserver so you can share it, it is already on the web. You can then use the link in your Blackboard course or you can embed it in your course as a published document. The link could be sent in an email, posted on a blog post, or used as part of an exam.

Easy conversion

Won’t converting from PowerPoint take a lot of work? No, simply drag your Powerpoint to your Google Drive, open it, and convert it to a Google Slide. This video does a great job showing you how.

Enhanced Q&A

Google Slides has a Q&A feature in the presentation mode. A URL will appear at the top of your slides so that participants can submit questions. You can have stopping points in your presentation so you can view the questions or look at the questions at the end of your presentation. It is a great way to collect questions, perhaps at the end of a class.

If you do not use a slide deck during your class, you could still have one slide running in the background for the sole purpose of collecting questions or ideas.

Students can also vote questions or ideas up or down.

No more lost Flash Drives

You no longer have to carry a flash drive around with your slide decks on it. Since this Google application is in the cloud, any computer, iPad/tablet, or smartphone can be used to access your presentations. You just need an Internet connection. All of our campuses have access to the Internet… except when a fiber cable is cut ;-).

I no longer carry media with me. I just access it on the web. If you are forced to use PowerPoint, you can always save your Google Slides presentation as a PowerPoint presentation.

Video Editing

It is wicked easy to insert a video into your presentation. More importantly, you can choose the exact segment you want to show. I wish I had known this for Faculty Development Days.

No dependency on special viewers

There is no software that must be downloaded and installed. If you can access the web, you can access Google Slides. Your content is available to everyone who can browse the web.

You can share a single slide

With Google Slides, you can link to a specific slide. I use this in my classes all the time if I want to have students focus on a specific topic.

Saves automatically

Next to collaboration, the fact that Google Slides saves automatically is fantastic. With all the Google applications, I no longer have to worry about always saving my work and potentially losing work and time because of a power outage or human error.

Have I convinced you yet to move to Google Slides? Still have questions? If so, please ask a member of the TEI team.

Ideas for using Google Slides

• 10 Google Slides activities to add awesome to classes
• Google Slides – Tutorial 04 – Creating an Interactive Presentation
• Two Creative Ways to Use Google Slides – from Greg
• 5 Unusual Ways to Use Google Presentations – from Jen Carey
• Creative Ways to Use Google Slides in the Classroom
• Using Google Slides to Teach
• TEI Collection – Google Slides