Google Presenter

I explored Google Presenter. I found it to be a bare bones version of PowerPoint. Slides are set up the same way, but I could not see how to change the template once a page was started. Text has the same familiarity as Word so it is easy to edit. Again it is limited with only six fonts available, but they are common ones. This would keep the students from picking the hard to read fonts. Transitions are on click only without fly in or fade outs or any of the other bells and whistles associated with PowerPoint. This is good in the sense that student will not be spending an excessive amount of time on froufrou and focus on content. Tables would be best made elsewhere and inserted into the document. Images and shapes are easily inserted, but…(there’s always a but). Images require an URL or need to be inserted as a image already on your computer. Presenter lacks the clipart abilities of PowerPoint. There are 12 shapes with more shapes available. The 12 were easy to insert but I was unable to insert any of the additional shapes or make drawings. I found help easy to use with simple directions. Only problem, it still didn’t work. I was able to insert slides or whole PPT documents into Presenter easily, but lack the transitions of PPT. A student could make up basic slides in PPT and upload them into a Google Presenter Doc.

I like the ability to use a Presenter Doc in collaborative, group activities. It acts the same as a wiki with the format of a PowerPoint. Students could access the document from any internet access point and changes in the document can be seen as well. I would like to compare this to the Zoho Show. Does a basic program do better to give students foundation skills of a particular type of program rather than give them in depth understanding of a single program? I have a friend that is a designer. All the manufacturers use a different program and he is trying to keep familiar with the most common, but he uses the foundation skills of how all the programs work to adjust from one system to another.