Get a quick tour of Slides. You'll notice that the Slides interface is very similar to Drawings. Slides does offer some additional options such as the ability to create multiple canvases, insert audio and video, and create custom backgrounds. Slides can be used for more than just presenting. During this module you will learn to create dynamic learning activities for students.

Slides Mania - Free Google Slides templates

Slides Carnival - Free Google Slides themes.

Slidesgo - More free Google Slides themes

When creating activites for students with Slides, an important skill to know is how to lock that canvas in place to prevent students from accidentally deleting or moving needed items. This is accomplished by dowloading a slide as an image, clearing the slide, then uploading the image as a background.

Learn the fundamentals of creating moveable activities in Google Slides and get some ideas for the types of activities that you can create for students to interact with. In this video I'll highlight how to create drag and drop, annotation, primary source analysis, "caption this", and graphing activities as well as other tips such as how to incorporate video, duplicate objects, and create an "infinite cloner" effect.

If you or your students are working on a smaller screen, it is helpful to know the ways in which you can maximize the space in Google Slides to create more room for your activity. This tutorial will show you 4 ways to increase space within Google Slides. As a bonus, you'll learn a tip to show students on how to move items on your slides without the use of a mouse or touchscreen.

Another way to use Google Slides is creating story books or readalouds. Google Slides can be used to create read alouds for students or have them create and publish their own story books. In this video we will take a look at the skills needed to make these such as creating and adding audio, configuring your audio to play, adding transitions between "pages", and publishing a story as its own webpage. You'll even learn how to create custom slide layouts so that you can setup a template for students to use.

Notes:

• When you provide a link to a published slideshow, you don't need to worry about sharing settings!

• The insert audio feature can also be used for students who need directions read or content explained.

Resources

Free online voice recorder https://online-voice-recorder.com

My Pickup Has Hiccups by Eric Curts (Sample story book)

Storybook Template - Simply add images, text, and then format as you wish!

In the article “Choices for Children”, Alfie Kohn reveals findings that giving students choice in learning tasks leads to greater task completion in less time. Student choice truly does work. Choice boards are a great way to accomplish this goal whether you are offering students a choice in how they learn or how they demonstrate their learning. In this tutorial I'll cover different options for creating choice boards with Google Slides and will overview some different options to show you what's possible.

Template Resources

• This or That Choice Board

• Menu

• Bingo Choice Board

• 3 x 3 Choice Board

• Slides Mania Choice Board Templates

• Simple Slides Choice Board Templates

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to create a branching activities in slides. There is only one skill you need in order to create these activities and that is how to link content on a slide to another slide in the presentation.Once you know how to do that, you can create self-remediating quizzes, choose your own adventure activities, and games.

Even better, show students how to do this so that they can create interactive stories to apply logic and demonstrate understanding. For example, science students can show various outcomes of lab experiments, english students can show character arcs, etc.

Tip: If you don't want students to be able to use the navigation buttons in the bottom left to skip past slides, select all slides in your presentation except for slide 1 and in the menu click Slide - Hide Slides. (tip courtesy of Jenny WInch)

Resources

Demo Activities: Sample Quiz, Dragon Quest Choose Your Own Adventure Story

Templates: 5 Question Interactive Quiz Template, Sample Jeopardy template

Animation projects in slides can be a creative and fun way for students to tell a story, reenact a historical event, demonstrate a concept or process, explain how to solve a problem, or define a vocabulary term.

In thie video, I will show you how to create simple animations by moving objects on your slide using the Animation option in the Insert Menu, how to preview your changes, and then display the finished project using the Slideshow option.

Sample Animations: Area of An Irregular Shape, Keeping up with the Kolonies

Another method of creating animations with Google Slides is called "Stop Motion" animation. That may sound complicated, but it really is not. To create stop motion animations in Slides, create a slide as you normally would. Then, one at a time, duplicate a slide (CTRL+D) and make small changes to the objects on the slide to simulate movement. You can insert shapes, images, text, and other items as needed. When you are done, you can Publish your slideshow to autoplay on the web and set how quickly the slides advance.

Sample Stop Motion Animation: The Cell Cycle

Learn More: If you are interested in trying this out with students, check out this article from Jake Miller filled with lots of useful tips.