Google Presenter

From the choices of Google applications, I chose to take a look at Google Presenter to see what it was all about.  Google Presenter is very similar to Microsoft Powerpoint.  

One of the first things I loved about Google Presenter was that it automatically saves your work very often, so you are not at risk of losing anything. I also loved that it is so easy to share- you don’t have to save it on flash drive, email it, or post it on a website.  As soon as you complete your presentation, you can click ‘start presentation’ to view it as a slide show. You can also give someone the web address of your presentation and it will automatically take them to your slide show.

The first thing I did not like about Google Presenter was that the automatic background for the slide is a chalkboard.  To me, it seems pretty outdated.  However, when you change the theme, there are several choices and a few even look 3D.  I also noticed right away that when I tried to push Enter to go to the next line of text, it didn’t do anything.  I had to use the mouse to click on the next line.  It wasn’t a huge problem, just an annoying inconvenience. I also found it frustrating that when trying to format text, there are only 6 different font choices. I like to think of programs like this one and Powerpoint as programs that give teachers a more interesting way of presenting information, but the limited font choices make it less interesting.

One of the best things about Google Presenter is that if students know how to use Powerpoint and Microsoft Word, learning to use Google Presenter will be easy.  They need to know how to use the basic toolbars and buttons in those programs. 

Students could use this program to demonstrate their knowledge on any subject or topic.  I think it lends itself easily to math because having slides allows you to show one step of a problem at a time.  

A teacher could give students different roles for working in a group to use Google Presenter.  If the teacher wants them to learn different aspects of the program, students could be in charge of different aspects such as background, layout, inserting pictures, adding sounds, changing the font, and things like that.  A teacher could also require a project to be a certain number of slides, and require each student to complete a portion of them.  

For any group work that involves technology, a teacher needs to consider whether or not to have all students in the group working together at once, or to give them some separate times at the computer.  It is difficult for more than one person to be sitting around a computer when only one person can work at a time.  It would be hard to keep the rest of the group on task while one student completes their part.  However, students can also learn a lot from each other when using technology together, so some teachers may want to have all students working at the same time, or at least have their group members close by for assistance.