Tech Tip: Google Slides

I'm guessing most of your are familiar with Powerpoint, but I personally prefer to use Google Slides, which is part of the set of tools Google offers for free web publishing and collaboration, along with Google Docs, Google Sites, Blogger, and so on. I am a fan!

One of the advantages of Google Slides is that it is very easy to embed somewhere else, so you can put a slideshow inside a blog post or blog sidebar, or you can add it to a webpage, as you can see at the bottom of this page.

STEP ONE: Create Slideshow. To create a slideshow, just go to Drive.Google.com, and use the New button (upper left side of screen) to start a new Google Slides document. When you see the interface, you'll recognize that it looks a lot like Powerpoint! There's no save button because Google saves while you are working. You can create slides, add text, add images, etc. just like with Powerpoint. For the purposes of this Tech Tip, create at least three slides with text and/or images.

STEP TWO: Embed Slideshow in Blog Post. Here's where it gets really fun! Create a blog post at your blog, and then come back to your Slides. In the File menu, choose Publish to the Web, and then click on the Embed option in the dialogue box. For size, the small option is usually about right for a blog post (for a blog sidebar, you would probably want to choose the custom size and set it to be 200 pixels wide). You can configure if you want the show to autoplay, the speed, etc. That's all up to you!

Click Publish, then OK, and you will see code in the box. This is the code you want to copy-and-paste into your blog post -- but make sure you copy and paste it into the HTML view, not the Compose view. Here's how to toggle to the HTML view where you paste in the code; it's at the far left end of the editing bar:

Publish blog post. You can publish your blog post and see if it worked! Here's the result at my blog. Label your blog as "Tech Tip" like usual, and let me know what you think. Have you used Google Slides before? I switched to Slides from Powerpoint years ago, and I have never looked back. :-)

Finishing Up. If the slideshow in your blog post worked, you are good to go with the Declaration.

Here is the combined slideshow with projects for both classes; as I add new slides, the slideshow will update here automatically (If you are looking at this early in the semester, you may see last semester's slideshow).