How to Make Slide Shows Matter in the Classroom

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      Student creation is ideal. It's what we want kids to do. We want kids to be able to show what they know by creating something new. No matter how you slice it any other way, it's the only form of learning that is not a pure regurgitation of material. It's the place where kids can actually think.
      What's one of the lowest hanging fruit for creation? It's presentations. There is software everywhere, and it's incredibly accessible. Kids learn about PowerPoint, Slides, and in some places Keynote from a very young age. The problem is that most teachers don't get creative with it. They just want to use it as a regurgitation of information, and that doesn't even really scratch the surface of what a presentation software can do.
      When you think about presentations, don't think in the style of just having kids tell you about something. Just doing a presentation about George Washington limits what kids can actually learn. It also limits their critical thinking skills
       So, what should you do? It's straightforward. Start with a scenario. Give kids an audience that they are creating the presentation for. Take the United Nations as an example. It's a group that has an interest in environmental, economic, and political issues. All of which makes it a group that can apply to almost any subject area. It means you can use it in nearly every classroom as an audience to build your presentation for. Kids are going to think more critically when they have to convince or inform a particular group, and it just makes the learning deeper.
      The scenario is a great place to start, but you can also use presentation software to create a host of things that aren't really presentations. The addition of easy collaboration makes it easy, and there are loads of possibilities. It's just a matter of getting creative with it. 
To start, the ability to automatically start a Google Slides presentation just with a link means it has all kinds of alternative use cases. You can do things like apps, books, comic strips, and more. You just need to use need to craft what the slides look like by adding shapes and adjusting the aspect ratio of the slide. You can make it look like almost anything. Then just get a publish to web link from the file menu, and you can choose the option to have it start as soon as a viewer goes to the link.
      There are also a couple of ways to use things like PowerPoint and Keynote. You could use shapes to create Infographics, and then you could use something like the Thinglink to make it interactive. You could also use something like Magic Move in Keynote to make what looks similar to a stop motion video.
      It all comes down to your imagination. Presentation software can be almost anything you want. You just need to design the scenario that goes around them.