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The Magic of Google Slides

Google Slides is one of my favourite G Suite tools. Its versatility and ease of use offers lots of amazing visual possibilities for students to present their learning in creative and interesting ways. 

Here are 10 tips for becoming a Google Slides wizard…

10. Master your design with Master Slides

Did you know that you can make a single change in one place that then changes on every slide?  Whether you want to add a graphic to every slide, reposition a textbox on every page, or change the font through your entire presentation, you can do it on the master and it will update on every slide. Click on Slide >Edit Master, then make your change to whatever type of slide you want changed. It’s like magic!

9. Voice Type your speaker notes

Typing is so 2019! So instead of typing all your speaker notes why not just talk to your computer and have the words magically appear in the notes section below the slide?  No special microphone or training required, just select Tools > Voice Type Speaker Notes, allow your microphone, then click and start speaking. And if you like this idea, you can find Voice Typing in Google Docs as well! Boom!

8. Stay focused when you need to insert an image

There’s no need to leave Google Slides just to find a great image to add to your presentation. Just go to Insert > Image and you’ll find options to add an image from your computer, from the Web, from your Google Photos, from a URL, or even directly from your webcam! All without leaving your slides so you can stay focused on making a great presentation! As a bonus, if you insert an image from the web this way, it’s also copyright free! 

What if you want an even bigger choice of images? There are several Add-ons for Google Slides that offer some stunningly beautiful high-res image collections, and many of them are free! Go to Add-ons > Get Add-ons and search for Unsplash Images. Or Pixabay Free Images. Or Adobe Stock images. There are lots to choose from, and having just the right image can really enhance your next presentation.

7. Add almost anything to a slide

Tucked away under the Insert menu is a treasure trove of options for objects you can add to your slides. As well as images, you can also add text boxes, audio, video, shapes, lines, charts, tables, diagrams and wordart. So get creative and add whatever you need to build a compelling presentation for your audience. Don’t overdo it though!  Remember, when it comes to slide design, less is usually more!

And yes, you read that right! You can now insert an audio file directly into a Google Slide! So students can now add voice notes, annotations, music, sound effects, pronunciations, and more.

6. Explore better design

Want some creative ideas for the design of your presentation? Check out the Explore feature built into Slides! It uses the power of artificial intelligence to magically suggest ways to improve the look of your slides. After you add your words and images to a slide, go to Tools > Explore to open the side panel and browse the suggested designs! When you see one you like, just click to apply it to your slide, and you’re done.  It’s that easy.

5. Publish to the Web

You can easily share your beautiful presentation by publishing it to the web. After you share your slides simply go to File > Publish to the Web and choose the settings you want for the published product. Share the URL and your slides will be visible through any web browser. What a great way to share your presentation with colleagues, parents or conference attendees. If you continue to make changes, the web version will automatically update so your published Slides always have the right content. And if you no longer need to share your slides, you can unpublish to remove them from view. You have complete control! It’s the cloud, baby!

4. Slides as Pages

Google Slides is a great presentation tool, but did you know it’s also an impressive desktop publishing tool! All you need to do is go to File > Page Setup and change the standard 16:9 slide format to whatever shape and size you’d like. Just choose Custom and enter your desired dimensions, such as 21cm x 29.7cm (aka A4). Then you can use all of the design tricks of Slides to create published documents like newsletters, posters, flyers, business cards, etc! In fact, you could even resize to the size of a mobile phone screen and create prototypes for app designs. So many possibilities! Using the File > Download As menu you can export directly to PDF if you’d like to print your finished product.  This little trick of changing the page size probably makes Slides the most versatile tool in the whole Suite!

3. Questions and Answers

When the time finally comes to stand in front of an audience and present your slides, why not give the Q&A feature a go? After you hit the Present button to begin your presentation, click the Q&A button in the floating black toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Depending on how the projection is set up, you may need to rearrange the windows on the screens a bit, but once you turn on the feature, the audience will see a URL at the top of the presentation screen, which they can go to to ask questions or make comments as you present. Audience questions will appear on your screen so you can monitor their feedback, or even present one of their great questions to the whole group. What kind of sorcery is this!?

2. Closed captions while presenting

There’s a ton of research that supports the positive impact that closed captioning has on literacy simply by having the words appear on the screen as you speak.  The same magic that allows Voice Typing can also add closed captions to your presentation, automatically as you present! Just click the CC button from the black toolbar when presenting and your words will flow along the bottom of the screen as you speak. You can even move the words to the top of the screen or change their size if you wish.

1. Collaboration is the real magic

Like all G Suite tools, the real magic happens when people can work together to share and build their ideas. Using Google Slides people can work together, on the same document at the same time, so work gets done faster, more easily and more collaboratively. Just click the yellow Share button, add your collaborators and then get busy together! Whether it’s a group project for a small group of students, a class project where everyone is able to contribute, or a staff presentation that requires input from multiple people, the collaboration feature of Google Slides will forever change the way you think about building presentations.


To learn more about Google Slides, check out the First Day of Slides series in the Google Teacher Centre. Or if you already feel pretty good about your ability to conjure up an impressive Slides presentation, why not show what you know and take the Google Educator Level 1 or 2 Certification.

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Remotely Possible

Remotyely Possible

As the world rearranges itself to cope with this dreadful CoVid-19 situation, the reality of social distancing is setting in. If we are to stop the spread of the coronavirus then we really need to pull back on the amount of contact we have with others, at least for now. As a result, events are being cancelled all over the place, businesses are telling their people to work from home, and schools are facing mass shutdowns until this thing is under some kind of control.

In the last few weeks at Google we have recieved lots of questions from schools about how we can support remote teaching – using technology to run classes virtually – so that while school might not be able to go on, the learning can. Most of the major edtech companies have responded to these requests by making sure their remote collaboration tools are available to all schools, and many are offering schools the use of premium features at no extra cost. Google, for example, is currently giving every G Suite school access to the premium (usually paid-for) features of Hangouts Meet for free, so schools can have up to 250 participants in a video call as well as recording and livestreaming features. Google Classroom is already well placed to support online learning, and of course Docs, Sheets, Slides etc do a great job of allowing people to work together no matter where they are.

Beyond the tools though, there has been a massive push to create resources to help teachers who have never had to consider how they might teach online. PD Partners, Google Educator Groups, and of course regular classroom teachers are busily creating videos, screencasts, notes, etc, to help guide their colleagues in how to operate in this new remote learning reality.

I’ve sat down a few times over the last few days to plan what I might contribute to this push for new content. I have made a lot of screencasts and tutorials over the years, and produced a ton of resources for teachers to help them understand how to get the best from technology in their classroom, but right now I’m trying to give some thought to what teachers really need if their school shuts and they learning must go on. How do we quickly give teachers the new skills they need, and what exactly are those skills anyway?

So I’m putting the question out there, and I’m inviting you to respond in the comments below… as we race to create more resources and content to help teachers get through these inevitable school closures, what do you think teachers most need?

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Something came up

Over the past few years I’ve run a lot of professional learning workshops for teachers. It’s been a joy to be part of the learning journey for educators as they discover new ideas for making a difference to the kids they teach. I couldn’t count the number of workshop sessions I’ve run, or the number of ideas we’ve shared, but it’s quite a lot. And even when I’m training on the same topics over and over again, every workshop is still different because of the collection of people and personalities in the room.

There is, however, one disturbing characteristic that too many of these workshops have in common, and that is the complete predictability of people who register to attend a workshop and then simply don’t turn up. Even when workshops are offered as part of a conference that people have paid good money to attend, you can still predictably count on a no-show rate of around 5% to 10%. There are no doubt some valid reasons that people might pay to attend an event and then not show up – unexpected things happen, your kids get sick, emergencies arise, etc – so I completely understand that expecting everyone to turn up to anything is unrealistic. 

What surprises me is how dramatically this changes when the event is free. I’ve been involved in putting together events for teachers, where we never charge anything to attend.  They are completely free. We put a lot of work into running them, we arrange and pay for catering, we book venues, and often pay for professional trainers to deliver the workshops. And we know that for the people who attend they get a great deal out of coming along and learning with us.

The thing that baffles me a bit is when people register to attend a free event and don’t show up. It honestly astounds me. When an event is offered at no cost I would estimate that the no-show rate rises to about 50%. I some cases it rises much higher, and I’ve even seen it rise to 100%.  You read that right. I’ve seen free events where literally nobody who registered turns up. Baffling. And so damn rude.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I think if you register to attend something, then you should turn up. Not just for PD workshops either, but for life in general… If say you’re going to be somewhere, then you should be there. It’s just a common courtesy to the people who put so much time, energy and money into running an event. I’m sure some people think that a “free” event costs nothing. Not so.  While it may cost nothing to them, there are considerable costs involved in making a “free” event happen, including catering, venue hire, personnel, swag, to say nothing of the time it takes to organise.  

With free events, many people feel it’s ok to register and not show up, because they simply have no skin in the game. I’m betting that people who pay thousands of dollars to attend a Tony Robbins conference all show up. Yet I could confidently predict that most free events will have about half of those who register not show up. I know it’s just human nature, but it’s a pretty disappointing aspect of human nature. I understand it’s going to happen, but please don’t be “that person” who registers for something and then vanishes with no warning.

Please, if you say you’re going to do something, do it. Whether it’s a tech workshop, a family function, a kids party or a meeting with a friend. If you say you’re going to be somewhere, be there. And if something comes up, and you can’t be there, please have the courtesy to let someone know so that the organisers know who to expect, or even so your place can be offered to someone else.

It’s just common courtesy.