Showing a selected portion of a video in Slides

A common question is whether you can play just a piece of a video in Google Slides.  The answer is yes!  Right-click the video and choose Format options.  Click on Video Playback and you can then set the Start and End times.

Here's a short screencast I recorded that shows how to do it...

Adding sound to Google Slides

With Grad Challenge presentations upon us, I've been getting asked about how to add sound to Google Slides. While you can't insert audio files directly to Google Slides, you can insert videos (either from YouTube or Google Drive).  So, the trick is to create a "video" that contains the audio you want to hear.  The video can have a still image or just a solid background.  You can create the video in WeVideo or any video editor, as shown below.

When you "finish" your video, save it to Google Drive.  You can then insert the "video" to your slide.  Playing the video will play the audio.  You can even set the video to play automatically when the slide is opened.

In a post earlier this spring, I showed how you can use a similar technique to create voice-overs for Google Slides. 

Naming versions of documents

Here's a simple tip that might come in very handy for you (I know it's saved me several times)-- you can name "versions" of a Google doc, sheet, or slides.  This can make it much easier to find the particular draft you're looking for.  It's also helpful when you're about to make a major change and you want to preserve a version prior, just in case there's a problem with the change.

To name the current version, use the sub-menu off of Version history (formerly called Revision history).

You'll now see the named versions when you go back to Version History.  Any version you don't name will still be listed as the date of that version.

Adding voice-over to Google Slides/Presentations

Google Slides does not have built-in functionality to insert audio, so how can you record narration and have it play over a slide? Here’s a technique I use. Note that you need to do this for each slide that has audio


Install the Screencastify extension (if you don’t already have it).


In Screencastify, choose “Record Tab.” You’ll get a countdown (3-2-1), then just start speaking. When done, choose Stop from the Screencastify icon.


You have now created a video of your screen with the audio you want.


In Google Slides, go to the appropriate slide and choose Insert...Video. Click the Google Drive option. You’ll see the “video” you just created. Insert it.


Click on the icon for the video. Resize it so it’s much smaller. Click Video Options. Select “Autoplay when presenting.” The video will now start as soon as the slide opens, providing your narration. You can also trim off time from the beginning or end, if needed.


If desired, you can hide the video icon by creating a shape with the same color as the slide background and dragging it over the icon.
Here’s all this in action.  Open the presentation and click Present.  Make sure your sound is turned up.

You can use a similar technique for PowerPoint 365 (the online version of PowerPoint). Note, however, that you'll need to put the video on YouTube for it to work.

Google Slides now has a Grid (Slide Sorter) view

Here's a nice new addition to Google Slides-- you can now view your slides in a grid view (like"Slide Sorter" in Powerpoint).  Just click on the icon on the lower left of the screen and your slides will show up in a grid, like so:

In grid view, you can move slides around or select a group of slides to apply a transition to, etc.

Here's another idea--I just read a post about a teacher  who using grid view with her students.  Each student has one slide in a presentation. By viewing the presentation in grid view, the teacher can see the progress each student is making.

Insert videos from Google Drive into Google Slides

Up until now, Google Slides only allowed YouTube videos. But many of us store videos in Google Drive. You can now insert those videos into Slides. Like so:

New Q&A feature in Google Slides

Google Slides (formerly Google Presentations) recently got a great update that's worth checking out. You can now collect audience questions using something called Q&A.  Essentially, while you're presenting, audience members post questions to a link you provide.  Other audience members can then vote up a a question.  At any point, you can see which questions have a lot of votes and reply to them.

This is a great way to involve the audience (even the shy people who might never raise their hand) and filter for questions that have a lot of interest.

Here's a video of Q&A in action (featuring the winner of the first Google Science Fair)

Made to Stick Google Slides Template

Many teachers (and maybe students) have read the book Made to Stick,  which is subtitled, Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

I was working on a new Google Slides presentation today and I noticed the the Heath brothers (who wrote the book) have created a Google Slides template.  It might be worth a look the next time you are putting together a presentation in which you want your ideas to, well, stick.

Another  great resource for effective slide decks is the  book Presentation Zen (available in the CVU library) and the companion website

Google Workshop Screencast

For those of you unable to attend the Google Workshops last week, I've put together a screencast of the presentation.
Here's a table of contents so you can skip ahead (that I created using a tool called Videonot.es thanks to Sarah Strack for the tip!):

0:40 Part 1- Using Templates in Google Slides and Docs
3:35 Part 2- Migration to cssu.org-- remaining issues (YouTube, Google Plus and Chrome logins)
4:27 Part 3- Using 3rd-party applications with Google Drive (it's more than Google Docs!)

I'd love to hear any questions or comments or to help you get started or move forward with any of this!
Thanks for reading,

What's New With Google 2105 Workshop

Here are the slides from this week's workshop.  I'll be updating them as I go through the workshops.

PollEverywhere now embeds in Google Slides

There are lots of good tools out there for assessing and getting instant student/audience feedback via technology, but PollEverywhere has been around (probably) the longest.  They just announced today that you can now embed the results of a "poll" into a Google Slides presentation.  It's still in "Labs," but worth checking out.  Good to know, as we use Slides more and more in place Powerpoint.
Here's a how-to:


Gathering audience feedback directly from Google Slides from Poll Everywhere on Vimeo.

New templates in Google Slides (Presentations) and Sheets, too!

image from pixabay.com

Yesterday I posted about the new templates in Google Docs.  What I didn't mention is that they're also in Slides (the "Powerpoint" of Google Docs) and Sheets (spreadsheets).

There are templates for things like calendars and monthly budgets (in Sheets) and science projects (in Slides).

Check them out at:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/u/0/

and

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/

What's up with Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides?

Remember when Google Docs became Google Drive?  You probably have noticed that there is now both Drive and Docs (and Slides and Sheets).  You may have also seen that there are now icons for each of these when in the App Launcher (which pushes Groups down into the "More" category, by the way). To cut through any confusion, here's the logic of it:

Think of Google Drive as a storage location.  Just like the G:/ drive here at school or a USB drive that you store files on.  Google Drive can store any kind of file-- not just Google Docs.  So, you can upload pictures, video, PDF, Word and Powerpoint files, etc. to make them available in the cloud.

Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides (formerly Presentations) are now three separate apps.  You can still access and/or create any of these kinds of documents through Drive, if desired.  If you use a mobile device (iPad, Android, etc.) you'll notice that there are separate apps there, as well.

I hope that helps.  Please let me know if you have any questions!

Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides

You have probably noticed that Google now has separate apps for Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides.  Nick fixed the link in Moodle and updated the icons, however it's possible that you may end up in a strange place wondering what happened to Drive.  So, here's what you need to know:

Google Drive is where you will find all of your documents, whether they're Google text documents (Docs), presentations (Slides), spreadsheets (Sheets), forms, or any other type of file (remember-- you can use Google Drive to store and share any kind of file.  In fact, the video below is stored in--and shared from-- Google Drive).

If you have GMail (or any other Google app) open, you can use the App Launcher (3 x 3 icon) to get to Drive.  If you end up in the Docs app and want to get to Drive, use the menu in the upper left.  Below is a 50-second video explaining this.

The information in the video is still accurate, although you can now use the new Drive icon.