Google Slides is one of the preferred tools today for creating online presentations. The cloud-based platform, accessible online and free of charge, makes it one of the tools preferred by educators.
What is Google slides?
Google slides is the application to make presentations from Google.
It is part of Google Drive, so it is totally free, you only need to create a Google account to use Google Slides.
How to delete a slide on google slides
If you want to delete a slide, you have two options:
Selecting the slide and then Edit and Delete, or by placing yourself on its thumbnail (in the bar on the left where you can see them all) and pressing delete.
Done.
Browse content while doing the Google presentation
Since Google Slides is from Google, how could it not have a direct integration with your browser!
If while you are preparing your presentation you need to investigate some data, you just have to go to the toolbar and click Tools (or Tools if you have the English version) and then Explore.
This opens a mini browser on the right side where you can search with the power that Google gives you.
From that same bar you can insert the links directly if you need it.
Although if you have read any of my other posts, you already know that I recommend that you first investigate, be clear about what you want to do and then open the presentation tool, but hey, anyone can have a slip.
Can you do columns in Google Slides?
Yes, you can do columns in Google Slides.
Google slides tools
If you have used any other presentation tool, be it PowerPoint or Prezy, you will see that Google Slides works very similar to these.
In the left sidebar you will see the presentation slides and in the top bar the basic actions on the element you have selected.
Let’s look at the basic actions in Google Slides.
Format the Presentation
The first thing you should do is format it.
On the right you have a sidebar that says “Themes”.
If you look closely, you can scroll down and see the number of themes that Google presentations have by default.
You can select a theme that you like or you can also import your own. For the latter, you just have to click on the button that says “Import theme”, and you can import presentations that you have previously made in Google Slides or import PowerPoint presentations that you have on your computer.
Choose presentation settings
When you have chosen the theme, you can also configure the page layout:
- Standard 4: 3
- Panoramic 16: 9
- Panoramic 16:10
- Custom
Add animations
Google Slides also has animations to add, both object animations and slide transitions.
It is also true that if you are used to using Power Point, I already tell you that you will not find as many as in this one.
To add a transition you must go to the Slide menu: change transition
In Google Slides you have 6 transitions available:
- Disappear
- Dissolve
- Move slide from right
- Move slide from left
- Cube
- Gallery
- Turn
When creating a slide, by default all the elements of the slide appear at the same time. We can also vary this by inserting animations in the different objects.
To do this, select the object you want to animate and then go to the Insert: animation menu and select the type of animation you want to add to the object.
Here we present some features of Google Slides that in many cases go unnoticed but that can be very useful when editing or creating presentations.
1. Shortcut URL for creating presentations
Presentations can be created in many ways, accessing slides.google.com and clicking on a new presentation, or through Google Slides. Another cool way to create presentations is with a direct URL.
https://slides.google.com/create
This is very useful if we want to add a bookmark in our browser so that by clicking we can open a presentation in white and start editing it.
2. Insert YouTube Videos
A particular feature of Google Slides is to allow inserting videos in presentations. Although PowerPoint also allows you to insert videos, in Google Slides it is much easier when it comes to YouTube videos and when it comes to avoiding incompatibilities with the formats or environments where the presentation is used (in PowerPoint we were used to that when sending a file with video to another person, they had to have the appropriate codecs and in some cases system incompatibilities are generated)
To insert a YouTube video in Google Slides, just go to the Insert -> Video menu and then type the URL of the YouTube video.
3. Activate Questions and Answers (Q&A)
When presenting a Google Slides presentation we can activate the option to Ask Questions (Q&A). Google Slides will give us a link that we can share with the audience or with the students if it is about presentations to make in class. Anyone using this link from their devices can easily ask questions that will appear in the speaker view.
The questions can be anonymous or have a first and last name, and once made they will appear in the list of questions. Other users will be able to vote on the most interesting questions and this will make those that receive the most votes appear in the first position. Then the presenter can review the questions and answer them.
Once the presentation is finished, the history of questions and answers can be seen through the Tools menu.
4. Google Slides Templates for Education
The tool already has Google Slides templates that can be used to save time when creating a presentation. They have styles and colors that give a unique design to the presentation, and save time.
There are also other sites that provide Google Slides presentations, either free or subscription-based.
Free Google Slides Templates and SlideModel’s Google Slides are two of these resources.
5. Write speaker notes with your voice
The functionality of writing by voice allows Google Slides to write the notes with our voice.
The browser will ask us for authorization to use the microphone. Then, we can select the language in which we will speak, and Google Slides will convert the voice into text.
The voice will be recognized and converted to text that will be inserted into the Speaker Notes.