Quick overview: A website (www.slideshare.com) that allows you to easily put your PowerPoint or PDF presentations on-line for your students to view. Free! (Note: If you’re not quite sure what PowerPoint is, please refer to the ICT Tip at the bottom of this blog entry.)
What does it do? If you use PowerPoint presentations in your classroom, Slideshare is a great way to share them with your students on-line without having to maintain a class website, Wiki, or Blog. In plain English, this means that you can put your presentations on-line and then simply provide a link for your students. That’s it!
How can it be used in the classroom? You could use this site to put materials on-line (PowerPoint or PDF) that you may have already presented to your students in your classroom as study guides. From my experience, my own students were often more likely to use study materials when they were accessible on-line. Please click on the sample image below to bring you to an actual Slideshare presentation. Once you are there you can use the “arrows” to navigate through the slides and the “full” button to make the sideshow full screen:
Extra information: What I really like about this site is that you don’t even need to create an account to view or even upload PowerPoint presentations. However, if you plan on using this site on a regular basis, it would be advisable to sign up for a free account so that you can keep track of previous slide shows that you uploaded.
ICT Tip: If you’d like to know more about PowerPoint, first view this video tutorial link for a brief overview by Don Shecter at about.com. If you’d like to know more about using PowerPoint in your classroom, then check out Robert More’s (ACCESS Adult Education Centre, Riverside School Board) RECIT project entitled “PowerPoint: Technology for the Non-Technical Teacher” at this link.
