Evaluation of Google Presenter

One of the first things that I noticed about Google Presenter is that there are many features borrowed from Microsoft PowerPoint that are (I think) meant to be user friendly. I can't remember exactly what this is called, but I remember from one of the articles we read earlier in the course, that programs are written with this in mind in order to make new applications easy for people to use and learn a new program.

At first glance, Presenter seems very basic and has fewer icons than PowerPoint, but while playing around and making a quick presentation, there really wasn't anything I couldn't do that I wanted to do. And it was pretty easy to figure out how to do everything. It took a few extra mouse clicks at first, but it didn't take long to find out how to add a slide, add speaker notes, change the theme, etc. There is an option to insert a video, but I couldn't find a way to insert audio, which I do quite often in PowerPoint so that is one thing I didn't like about Presenter. There are fewer options for slide layouts than PowerPoint, but the basics are there.

All the students at my school have laptops and our students have school email through Google so this program is a natural fit our me! In fact, just last week my students worked on a group project and several groups chose to create a PowerPoint for their presentation. Instead of using traditional PowerPoint, many groups used Presenter so that each group member could collaborate and have the finished product saved for everyone to view. Since my students are already pretty familiar with PowerPoint (our student laptops use the Open Office suite of products instead of Microsoft Word but it's basically the same) there really isn't much that I would need to teach them before they used Presenter, especially since it's so similar to PowerPoint.

Students can share their work with Presenter in small groups or with an entire class by inviting users. A link to the project could also be included in a class blog so that others could see and use the presentation. It could be used in many subject areas; collaboration on a research paper or project, gathering and recording data for a science project, brainstorming ideas, making word webs, and of course, putting all the information together for a final presentation.

The teacher's role for helping students collaborate to use Presenter would be first to make sure students know how to use it and are comfortable with the program. The teacher could show students a finished presentation and then go through the steps for how to start a new presentation, select a theme or background, add new slides, insert tables, videos, images, etc. Then, students could create a short presentation on the topic of their choice as a way to show the teacher that they understand how to use the program before starting the "real" project. The teacher should also show students how to invite other people to the presentation for collaboration.

I don't think there are any special managerial or organizational considerations the teacher needs to consider that are out of the ordinary for this program. As with any use of technology, the teacher should make sure the internet connection is working, or, if using a lab, it should be reserved in advance. A back-up lesson should be planned in case the technology is unavailable.

Overall, I like Google Presenter. I think it is very comparable to PowerPoint for a basic presentation. It works especially well for my students since they already have Google accounts through my school and are pretty familiar with PowerPoint.