Google Slides

Comments: Google Slides is incredibly easy to use and makes setting up a slideshow intuitive. I have had colleagues varying in age from 18 to well over 70 using Slides effectively. Many of our students also use the program for their in-class presentations, as it is more affordable than some of the other programs out there and is included for free with GMail accounts.

Pros: Slides possesses all of the things you would expect from a presentation application: there are transitions, sound effects, plenty of professional themes, templates, and easy controls to add images, photographs, or other media. Best of all, Google's standard Slides web program with GMail can be accessed anywhere and is free. Sharing is as simple as clicking "Share" and including any necessary e-mail addresses. Using a theme, I am able to pre-design all of my slides and simply fill in the necessary information. I have been able to use Slides as both a presenting software as well as a means through which to create information presentations to share information with my colleagues.

Cons: Using Slides does require GMail, and this may be restrictive for some users, but GMail is amongst the most popular and well-respected e-mail providers out there. In addition, Google Slides may not have the extensive transitions of other programs, but this is not missed, in my experience.

Comments: My overall experience has been very positive. I am always looking for ways to allow my students to show their creativity. Writing can get a little boring at times for many students, but with the offerings of Google Slides, even my most reluctant writers are excited to come up with new stories and ideas.

Pros: Google Slides allows so much opportunity for students to be creative. Essentially it is like PowerPoint, but it is much more user friendly and allows for so many more options. Students can add pictures, text, links, etc. I have had students write stories on this and they have a great time doing it. They add a few sentences on each slide with text and add pictures. The pictures can be changed to do special effects like spinning or disappearing. This allows students to do all sorts of fun and creative things. There are also opportunities for outside the box thinking. I have had my students use Google Slides to make a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story. They write a story and then at the end they create a link to two different endings. These endings are shown on different slides and the user can click on the ending that they choose. This has been a very fun experience!

Cons: There is a small learning curve with Google Slides. Students will need some practice with learning the different skills. Some of the capabilities are unknown until it is introduced to the student . So the teacher has to do some extra planning to make sure this is done correctly. But considering all that it has to offer, Google Slides is a must in the classroom for creative thinkers!

Comments: Overall my experience with Google Slides has been positive and convenient. I would definitely recommend this to any student or team so that they can take their presentation anywhere without having to worry about which version of Powerpoint or softwares other computers have or about having to save the presentation to any computer. Almost everyone has a Google account and it is so easy to just log in and start working on your presentation any time and any where you have internet access, and the app makes it so you don't even need a computer! For once I actually did not stress about group projects using Google Slides because I would always wonder or worry about my other group members and what they were doing (or not doing) and this allows everyone to work together in real time and removes any excuse of not being able to get together to work on it! 10/10 would recommend!!

Pros: I love Google Slides. As a graduate student, I had many presentations and before Google Slides there would always be some worry about which version of Powerpoint the computer would have, and if the presentation would look the same as how I designed it. Often times, depending on the version of Powerpoint available in the classroom, the effects and even font of the text would change! With Google Slides it does not matter which computer is being used, and presenters do not have to worry about their presentation changing in appearance or function and that is a huge relief, especially when as I student I spent a lot of time making sure my presentations looked aesthetically pleasing! I love that all I have to do is log in to my Google account and that I have access to my presentation anywhere I go. Versions of Powerpoint were always different in classrooms, and it would be so disappointing to see the pretty font or effects disappear only for the most basic fonts and no effects to show up. I really love that I can go anywhere and have access to what I am working on, and also that it saves directly into my Google account and that I do not have to save it directly on my computer! One of my other favorite things about Google slides is that it makes group presentations so easy, whether it is for school or office projects, because there are real time updates and multiple people can work on a slide at the same time and literally be on the same page! Teamwork is so easy with this!

Cons: What I like least about this software is the minimal template designs and lack of cool animations and effects. This isn't a huge deal though because there are ways you can put in images and use pretty fonts or color schemes to make the presentation appealing. It definitely lacks compared to Powerpoint, but the convenience of Google Slides to work with individually or with groups is still worth limited options of enhanced aesthetics. Also, it can take a long time to download the app. And it is a little inconvenient at times that the app only allows you to upload one picture at a time to a slide- it would be awesome if we can select more than one picture at a time so that way we do not have to keep opening out images and scroll until we find what we are uploading again and again. However this feature is still super convenient because it does not require downloading and saving images before uploading them on to a slide and is not that time consuming if you save your photos at the beginning of the camera reel so you don't have to keep scrolling through your entire gallery to upload.

Comments: My overall experience using Slides has been very positive. I enjoy the cross-platform, free, easily accessible design of this software and I feel the pros significantly outweigh the cons. Even though I have powerpoint installed I only use it if for opening existing presentations I have received from someone else. For be Slides is always the preferred choice when I want to create or edit my own presentations.

Pros: When creating a presentation I have a choice between powerpoint and google slides. I prefer slides because: - it is free to use
- it works online and I do not need to install anything/have anything installed on my computer
- I have many devices (laptop, desktop, android, iphone) and I can view, use and edit my presentation on any one of those devices
- The interface is easy to use and I can find the features I am looking for typically without significant effort
- If working with someone else, you can collaborate on a project in real time
- You can publish and embed your presentation on a website and share it with people I also like that the work is saved online so if and when my laptop dies, I do not have to worry about copying files anywhere, my work is safe. Overall there are many pros to using this product.

Cons: As for styling the presentation, the selection of themes is quite limited and I wish there were more options. From a functional standpoint, because of features like real time collaboration, you have to be online to use it. My internet connection is bad and cuts off sometimes, so I have to pause work until it resumes. No connection causes a notification bar to show up saying "trying to connect" and everything becomes disabled until I am online again.

Comments: Overall, it's made a drastic difference to our company's efficiencies and has helped us produce work faster without multiple rounds of physical interactions to get to a good place. This along with the other G Suite products are part and parcel to our improved processes and will continue to use them!

Pros: Google Slides has provided a brand new way of all departments in my company to collaborate quicker and easier. The ease of assigning various people really helps to alert people without sending additional recap emails and digging through various threads to understand changes that have been made/ requested for.

Cons: There are times when we need to take our slides offline and convert them into Powerpoint. During these moments, it can be a little troublesome to reformat the deck as there are differences in web-friendly fonts etc. Apart from this, it is quite difficult to get the same size when copying an image over to Powerpoint which can be cumbersome during last minute changes. For a deck which is 100 slides long, this can be quite daunting and time consuming.