Google Slides: More Than Just a Presentation Tool
When people think of Google Slides, they usually just think that it is used for creating presentations. While you are sitting at your computer putting together your next Google Slides presentation, have you found yourself wondering, "I know there has to be more that I can do with this amazing tool than this, right?!?!" You are 100% correct! In this post, we are going to talk about all of the ways that you can use Google Slides beyond just a presentation tool.
Student Creation
Digital Magazine
With Google Slides, you can have your students create digital magazines. With Google Slides, you can adjust the page size (File > Page Setup > Custom) to fit the size of a magazine.
Students can then create their magazine and then it can be converted to a pdf (File > download as > pdf).
Here are a few links to some magazine templates created by Ryan O'Donnell (@creativeedtech).
Create Your Own Adventure
If you are like me, I loved reading those create your own adventure books as a kid. You can transfer that excited to your students by having them create their own adventure using Google Slides. With Google Slides, you can add hyperlinks that link to other websites, but did you know you can link to other slides within the document?
This allows you to create a create your own adventure story by having students set it up where depending on the option that is chosen it will direct them to a specific slide. A link to a Create Your Own Adventure template can be found here.
Student Interactions
Collaborative Groups
With the power of G Suite apps, students can work collaboratively on a doc, slides, sheet, etc. While this is awesome, it can get a little confusing at times to keep track of what slide you are on and make sure you are contributing to the correct slide. Well, Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) has created a great template for collaborative groups. The template can be found here. With this template, groups are assigned a color. Each slide is a different color. Groups can add new slides by clicking the arrow next to the plus sign to add a new slide with their groups color.
This helps students stay organized. Also, it helps the teacher monitor students to ensure that they are on the correct slide.
Group Collaboration Questions
Another way you can have students collaborate with Google Slides is by having them answer questions collaboratively. With the Group Collaboration Questions template, which can b found here, Students have a place to insert their answer and then there is a spot of a group consensus answer. You can have the students adjust the color in which they type in their answers so when they compose their group answer, you can easily see which parts of each individual answer helped contribute to the group response.
Brainstorming/Graphic Organizers
Another awesome use of Google Slides is to use it as a collaborative brainstorm/graphic organizer platform. Ryan O'Donell (@creativeedtech) has once again created another gem which can be found here.
I could go on forever here. Google Slides has so many uses beyond just a presentation tool. Is there a way that you have used Google Slides that was not mentioned? I'd love to hear about it in the comments section below!
