Presentations Slideshow

  I wanted to add a link to the super quick Presentation I did on Google Drive.  This is just a few pictures and comments about my time serving in the town of Ishinomaki, Japan, after the 3.11.11 earthquake/tsunami. You can see this presentation if you click on this link: Elisabeth's Presentation .
  I have made several presentations of my time in Japan, helping with relief work, but all of those presentations have been on my Mac's Keynote.  I never knew you could link a presentation into a blog, or even have several people making comments, editing, etc...  That was a nice fact to learn.

 Some aspects that interest me are:
 1) THIS IS FREE!  All these great specs can be found on google.docs and it is free.  I am amazed by this.  Not only is it free for individuals, but seems to be free for classrooms, schools, businesses, etc..  That's a nice price.

2) It's all about collaboration.  You can share links to your blog (which I did...see above link), you can    have others commenting and making changes on your presentation, you can share it to anyone, everyone, or just keep it private, and you can have multiple people working on the same presentation at the same time.

3) You can embed.  This is a new one for me.  I personally have never embed video's or files into presentations, but I did try in and succeeded in embedding an old video from YouTube into my new presentation.  It worked just fine, and I was able to add it easily.  This was a nice discovery for me.

I found a great link to embed here: Google Presentation Tutorial.  This guy, Chase Swift, does reviews and tutorials on google.doc apps.  This was super helpful to watch, yet I did have to turn the speed up go faster, cause he talks pretty slowly.

  One negative I found, was that I could not import my Keynote presentation into the Google Presentation slides.  I tried this, because on page 77 of Google Apps Meet Common Core, Graham said that you could.  But, when I tried it, it did not work for me.




 In Micheal Graham's book, Google Apps Meet Common Core, Graham states, " The Common Core State Standards for Speaking and Listening demand that students have an extensive set of skills in presenting information." (p. 72).  If students have to use not only verbal, but visual examples when presenting in class, then I feel like Google's Presentation tool is a great app for them to use.  Graham lists out several of the Standard that students are suppose to meet, noting how Google docs can be used in all of these Standards.  He encourages students and teachers to learn proper ways of storing and managing their files, due to the increase in use of technology in their studies.
  Graham lists out the other uses for Presentations and how it can be used in the classroom, on page 88; saying it can be used for the following: "Flash cards, note-taking, writing projects, teacher presentations for content, and student presentations for content".  These are great areas to incorporate these tools.

  Before starting the reading in Graham's book, I quickly made a simple presentation.  But, after reading Chapter 5, I tried several of the tools mentioned.  I enjoyed playing around with it more and it made me realize that there is much more I can do on my next presentation.