Presentations in Google Apps

I just finished a rotation with fifth graders creating Google Apps Presentations, which I have never used before. In the past, I have used Power Point. I wanted to move to Google Apps to make it easier for students to work from any computer. The real benefit was the ability to share presentations.

Our content centered on the 50 State Quarters Program, statequarterguide.com. Students selected states to learn about by researching the symbols on the quarter reverses. A great resource is h.i.p. pocket change at usmint.gov/kids. Students created slides featuring the designs and their descriptions of them. They accompanied each with a separate slide that gave a fact about one of the symbols.

  

As students finished creating the slides, I assigned them to peer editing groups. The sharing and commenting features are awesome. Students were able to work on giving constructive, specific feedback to help their classmates. Here is a sample of the comments peers wrote to each other.

I also appreciated the ability to have each student share their presentation with me once, giving me the ability to track their progress as they worked in contrast to having each student submit only their finished project to my Dropbox.

Students enjoyed using Photo Booth effects to take a photograph of them holding their favorite quarter.