What's great about Google Presentation (like many of the other Google processing applications) is the ability to view and edit the presentation from multiple computers at the same time. You can see what others are doing on the presentation in real time! Like Professor Jahn mentioned in class the other day, this completely eliminates the need to share this type of information via email and have to worry about what version of the same presentation people are working on and what one is the most updated etc. It is all the same document/presentation.
As an example, this tool could be great for students working on a group project in which they have to present their information together. They can delegate the different sections of the presentation each student will be responsible for, create a presentation, and each add their information from anywhere they can access Google. Not only will they then be able to see each others work but they can also work to make sure their project presentation is cohesive and flows from one section into the next. I don't know how many times I had a group project in which sections were delegated out and then when we had to put it all together, not only was it a technical pain, it was haphazard and no matter how much time each individual spent on their section the project as a whole seemed disjointed.
While I do like this application, I do think it has some limitations in comparison to an application like PowerPoint. Google Presentations seems to be a very basic version of PowerPoint and there is not as much you can do when it comes to effects and spiffing up the presentation itself . Yet, students would still be able to attach links to their presentations, choose themes, backgrounds, and layouts for the slides, insert pictures and tables etc. Another useful tool that Google Presentation incorporates is what they call Speaker Notes. For each slide the presenter can insert some notes to help to jog their memory as to what they wanted to cover during this slide and not just be reading whatever it is they wrote on the slide itself!
I had never used Google Presentation before but am pretty familiar with the GoogleDocs system in general so it was fairly easy to get the hang of. I think this program would be fairly simple to work with even for someone who has no familiarity with it. If PowerPoint overwhelms and confuses you and all you want is some visuals and keywords, Google Presentation is your tool. Or if you want to be able to easily share and work on a project, again this is for you. My group simply added the needed amount of slides, delegated out which individual was responsible for what slide, did our work, and reviewed each others sections. Simple, Quick, and Useful!
I am excited to learn about other parts of the GoogleDocs Suite because I have never worked with Picassa, Forms, or Sheets and want to learn their potential for my personal use, use as a teacher, and the use for students. I will try to paste links to the use and examples of these applications as soon as possible. Thanks for checking in!
