Publish your Presentations

Making your presentation materials accessible to students outside of class time can be really valuable - for those who missed class and for those who want to review.  Saves you time retrieving the materials and copying it.  Publishing your material on the world wide web allows you to share it as a captive slideshow.  Unlike sharing a presentation with students, the published version can be set to advance automatically and view in full screen.  You can use either a URL link or you can embed the slideshow into a web page or blog post.

Publish a Google Slideshow

In Google Drive, open your completed presentation.  Select File, then Publish to the web.  Follow the steps on the prompts.  You can set the slideshow to begin automatically, advance on specific intervals, and/or loop continuously.  You can share the link via e-mail or social media (Google+, Facebook, or Twitteror you can copy the embed code to use on your website or blog.

[This feature does not work with PowerPoint presentations unless they have been converted to Google format.]

Create a Slideshow in PowerPoint

Most people have a lot of previously created content in PowerPoint and sometimes it doesn't transfer well to Google.  So keep it in PowerPoint.  But, one of the drawbacks of using PowerPoint is that for students to view independently (at home perhaps) they must have Microsoft Office installed ($$$) on their computer.  There is a way around this, however.  Save your presentation as a "show".  [To set your show to advance automatically and specify the timing of slides use the Transitions tab.]  In PowerPoint, select File, Save As, and in the file type drop down box look for PowerPoint 97-2003 Show.  This will create a .pps file.

Upload this file to your website.  Now when students click on the link it will automatically download the file and they can view it using the free Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer application.

If you want to embed the show on your website or blog, you'll need to upload the file to a cloud service (such as Skydrive) where you can generate the embed code.

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