Google Slides and PowerPoint are used all over the world as visual aids for lessons and presentations. Not always used well, mind you (that’s another post entirely), but certainly used.

However, there are tons of interesting ways that you and your students can use Google Slides that aren’t slideshows. (Most of these work for PowerPoint as well, but I’ll stay focused on Google Slides for now.)

Scrapbook pages (aka digital posters)

A fun lesson idea is to have students create a scrapbook page for a person or character. What would Florence Nightingale have put in a scrapbook page? Or Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby? The free-form layout of Slides makes this type of structure possible.

Digital index cards

Back in my high school days (in the days when libraries had <cough> card catalogs), we were taught the technique of using index cards for research note-taking. The idea was, when you found a good source, you wrote it’s bibliographic details on a card. Then, on other cards, you’d write one key fact or quote per card, with all citation info needed. When the time came to start writing your report, you could easily organize your cards in order to create a logical flow of ideas. 

Google Slides works great as digital index cards for research. Students can put one fact per slide and can keep any info, images, or links that they will need, and can easily color-code the slides/cards as needed. When research is over and it’s time to write, the Grid view lets students easily rearrange their cards into appropriate order.

Graphic organizers

You can make graphic organizers in Google Slides! You can build all sorts of shapes, boxes, and text, and then make a bunch of blank text boxes for students to fill in. Or, better yet, if you already have graphic organizers on paper, you can scan them and insert them as the background image of a slide. Share the graphic organizer via Google Classroom, and you're good to go!

Children’s book

Students can easily design and layout a children’s book with Slides, and can either draw and scan their own artwork or find images/photos online. For the lower grades, this is just authoring and illustrating a book, but this is a surprisingly useful assessment for higher grades. The process of reducing a complex topic into children's language is a rich pedagogical technique. Students can make a picture book explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, or re-telling Catcher in the Rye, or describing the difference between acids and bases.

Imagine projects like this, but you don't have to carry them home in boxes to grade them.

Procedural writing

Students can write instructions in the form of a slideshow. Science lab procedures and math techniques can be made step-by-step, slide-by-slide, and can include photos or videos. Flow charts are easy to create in this format as well. This semester’s class can make the procedural slideshows for next year’s students!

"Your assignment today is to make me a panini. Then, uh, write down how you did it or something...."

Vocabulary flashcards

Students can make vocab flashcards easily with Google Slides. They can put the words and definitions on sequential slides, or they can put the words in slides and the definitions in the “speaker notes” section. And of course, we all know the teacher's trick that the act of making flash cards is part of the learning process, too.

Infographics, brochures & menus

If you don’t feel like teaching students to use complex graphical programs, have them create infographics, brochures, or menus in Google Slides. Just like the other activities, the free-form layout allows for a wide range of creativity. Pro tip: You can make Google Slides pages any shape or size you want, even 8.5" x 11" portrait. Go to File > Page Setup and change the size to Custom.

Narrated photostory

A series of images can be set to music or narrated if you also use the Screencastify Chrome extension. You may have a future Ken Burns in your classroom right now!

Bonus collaboration

By the way, don't forget that the beauty of Google Slides is that students can collaborate on any of these projects. They can share and work the slides on different computers, and the version history lets you peek in on who contributed which pieces! Projects like the ones above can really shine when you let students be creative together!

If any of these activities sound like a good fit for your class, visit your DLC (or WHS teachers, email me)! They have lots of ideas and can help you develop the project and support your class!

Tom