In this video, I'm going to show you must-have Google Slides add-ons for teachers.
Google Slides add-ons are third party apps that add additional functionality
to your Google Slides. Some of the add-ons that I'm going to show you in
this video will allow you to add different features to your Google Slides
and some are even more powerful and will make your Google Slides presentations
interactive with your students. I've only chosen to show entirely free add-ons in
this video or add-ons that do have some paid features but have enough
functionality with the free version, that I don't think it's necessary to pay for
an upgrade. Just like Google Chrome extensions, these Slides add-ons can make
your life as a teacher significantly better and can improve your teaching
practice. I'm excited to show you in this video what they're all about.
If you appreciate the tips that I share in this video, please show your support by
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add-ons for teachers in this video or if you have a question about any of the
add-ons that I show, please ask in the comments below.
The very first thing you'll need to do is open up a Google Slides presentation.
So first I'll go up to the waffle, select Google Drive, then I'm going to pick a
Slides presentation that I've already created or you could choose to make a
new one. In the menu bar on Google Slides, you'll notice that there is a button for
add-ons. When you click 'Add-ons,' you'll see a list
of all the add-ons that are already installed on Google Slides and in order
to get new ones, you're going to scroll down to 'Get add-ons.' There you can either
scroll through the different add-ons that are available or you can use the
search box to search for a specific add-on that you're looking for. I'll be
including direct links to all the add-ons that I show in the video
description below. When you find an add-on that you want to
install, simply click on it, and then go through the process of installing the
app. Some are quite quick to install and others will make you go to another
website in order to sign up for an account. And then if you decide that you
no longer want to have an add-on installed, just go back to 'Manage add-ons,'
find the add-on that you want to remove, and then you can uninstall it. All right
the first few add-ons that I'm going to show you are about changing the
appearance and adding different elements to your slides.
The first is Unsplash. Unsplash is also a website that has a bunch of free images
that you can take and use, without worrying about copyright infringement.
Plus, the pictures on Unsplash are really cool and unique and will definitely add
a different flair to your Google Slides. So to get an image, just go up to 'Add-ons,'
select Unsplash, then you'll see the Unsplash menu pull up as a sidebar on
the right hand side of the screen. At the top you can search for an image that
you're looking for and then when you find one, simply select it, and it will
add that image to your slide. The default size will cover the entire size of your
slide, but you could move that image around and also add text on top of the
image as well, so it's pretty much the exact same thing as adding a different
background to your Google Slide. The next add-on is Extensis Fonts. Extensis
Fonts does what its name suggests and gives you a ton of different fonts to
choose from that normally would not be available in Google Slides. So you can
see when I open up this add-on that it will pop up a sidebar menu and from
there I have tons of different fonts that I can choose from. So anytime you've
seen people using slides that have these really cool fonts, they've probably
gotten it from using this add-on. So here you can see that it's really easy to use,
all I have to do is highlight the text, and then pick some different fonts that
I want to try out. So you can see how all these different fonts will definitely
add a different dynamic to the slides that you make, as opposed to some of the
more kind of regular, boring fonts that are available in Google Slides. The next
add-on is Flaticon. Flaticon allows you to add different types of icons to your
Google Slides. So you'll see that when I open up Flaticon, there's a menu where I
can choose to look for different types of icons that I might want to add. Some
of the icons are part of the premium version. You can tell that because of the
little crown that's next to the icon, but there are enough free icons that are
available, that I don't think it's necessary to pay for the premium version,
unless you really want to use all those different types of icons. So to add the
icon, select it, and then choose to insert it in the slides.
Once the icon is inserted, you can resize it and drag it around wherever you'd
like. The next two add-ons are great for foreign language teachers or just
teachers that need to use multiple languages in a single slide deck.
The first is Slides Translator, which does what it sounds like and will help
you translate text from one language to another. When you open up Slides
Translator, you'll see that you're given some different options in the sidebar
for which language to translate the original text to. Then all you need to do
is highlight the text, select the language, then it will populate a
translation of that language. I know that not all of the auto translators work all
that well, but this one seems to be relatively accurate and if there are
some small mistakes that you recognize, you can of course fix those as well. The
next add-on is called Easy Accents. Easy Accents allows you to add accents
that would appear in different languages. For example here where it says, "Hola, como
estas," I'm missing two accents that I would normally need in order for it to
be written correctly in Spanish. So to get those accents, I'm just going to
click on the add-on, select the language that I need the accent for, and then
choose the letter with the accent and it will add that into my text in the same
format and font size that the text was originally in. The next add-on is called
Hypatia (I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly) and what it does is allows you
to easily build an accurate mathematical equation. I can do things like adding
exponents and other mathematical symbols that normally wouldn't be available for
you on a typical keyboard. Once you're done and you're ready to add the
equation to your slides, just click 'Insert' and it will show up directly on
your Google Slide, where you can rearrange it and also resize it as
needed. The last three add-ons that I'm going to show you will significantly
change the functionality of your Google slides by making them interactive. One of
those add-ons is Pear Deck for Google Slides, which is
definitely one of my favorite add-ons. I actually have an entirely separate
tutorial about all the features of Pear Deck, so I'm only going to show some of
it here and if you want to learn all about how to use Pear Deck, I definitely
recommend that you check out my separate tutorial. You'll see on the side menu
after you've opened Pear Deck that there are different options for the
interactivity tools that you can add to your Google Slides. One of those tools is
that you're able to record and insert audio directly into the slide. I know
people are always looking for different extensions and apps that allow you to
add different audio files and so it's really cool that Pear Deck has that
directly built into their app. So to record the audio, all you need to do is
click 'Add Audio to Slide,' record what you want to say, so you could give students
some instructions here for example, and then add that audio file to the slide.
And in a moment, I'm going to show you what this is going to look like on the
student end, so you can see how a student could actually listen to the audio.
You'll also see on the menu that a couple of the options have a little
crown underneath them and those are premium Pear Deck features. I do really
like those features but it's also okay to not necessarily have them if you're
only able to use the free version. So let's say for example that I want to ask
my students to respond to a question that I've written in text. Then, in order
to create an interactive question, I'm just going to select 'Text.' That will add
the interactive question to the Pear Deck and again you'll see what that
looks like on the student end in just a moment. When you're ready to begin the
lesson, go up to 'Start Lesson.' You can see here that you also have the option to
set this up as a live lesson or to have students move through the slides on
their own pace during a synchronous learning. It's important to note that
students do not need separate accounts in order to get into Pear Deck. The only
person who needs to set up an account is the teacher. So here you can see on this
split screen that after a student goes to joinpd.com and enters the class
code, the teacher will see that students have joined the lesson, and can then
choose to begin the class. When the teacher begins the lesson, they are in
complete control over which slide appears on the students screen. Then, when
I actually get to the interactive slide, students
can see the audio file in the bottom corner of their slide, that they can
select in order to listen to what I recorded and then they can also choose
'Answer Question' in order to answer the question that I posed on my slide. And
then on the teacher end, you can select 'Show Responses' to see the different
answers that students have written. Those answers will come in anonymous and will
actually be posted live as students are writing them. The next interactivity add-on is
called Slido. Slido has some different functionality from Pear Deck, that I
think makes it worth taking a look at as well. After you've opened up Slido,
you'll see that there are some different options for the types of questions that
you can ask your students or your audience to answer. So you can do things
like ask your audience different poll questions and then you can also choose
the way in which your audience would respond. So let's look at the Word Cloud
right now because that's a really cool option. So I could write a question like,
"What did you think about today's lesson?" When I'm ready to pull my audience, I'm
going to select 'Present with Slido.' Participants don't need an account in
order to answer the question, they just need to enter the code that you
presented on your screen. Then they can enter their name, as well as their answer
to the question, and you'll see when they answer the question that that's also
going to show up immediately on the teacher slide as well. And then as more
people start to answer the question with different responses, you'll see that it
also creates a Word Cloud, where the most frequent answers show up as the largest
text. In addition to a poll question, you can also ask your students a quiz
question. So here you would first write the question and then select the
different answer choices. And just like the poll question, students would enter
Slido by entering the class code, then they would answer the quiz question that
you asked. On the teacher end, you can see the number of students that responded, as
well as who responded, and then you can show how many people in the class
selected which answer, as well as which answer was correct. The last, and I'd
argue most powerful and definitive, must-have add-on for Google Slides is
the Nearpod add-on. Nearpod does have a paid program that has a lot of other
features, but their add-on also gives teachers a lot for free. You'll
see on the sidebar menu that there are all kinds of different elements that you
can add to your slides from Nearpod. It's not just interactivity tools, there's
lots of content that you can directly add here as well. So for example you
could add video content. So here I'm going to select to add a video about
Ancient Greece. You can also add a collaborative slide, which works very
similar to Padlet, where students will post their responses and be able to see
each other's responses posted directly to a bulletin board. So here I'm going to
write a question about the video that I just added, that I want my students to
respond to. Then there are also tools like the Draw It tool, where you could give
your students a prompt and then have them draw their response to a question.
So since we're talking about Greece, I could have them do something like draw
Athens or draw something like the Parthenon here. And a tool I really love
is the Field Trip tool. When you select a Field Trip tool, it will add different
360 degree images to the Google Slides. And then another really cool function is
Fill in the Blanks. With Fill in the Blanks, you can type out a sentence using
keywords that you want your students to be able to fill in. So here I'm going to
write a sentence related to Ancient Greece. Then on the next slide, I can
select all the keywords that I want students to be able to drag and drop
into my fill in the blank sentence. And lastly, I'm going to show you the quiz
tool, which you could use as an exit ticket. So what you do here is write your
quiz question, create your answer choices, and now we'll add a multiple-choice
question to the Google Slides. Once you're ready to actually present the
Nearpod lesson with students, you're going to click 'Save' and go to Nearpod.
Once in Nearpod, you'll see the lesson show up, and just like with Pear Deck,
you'll have the option to either create this as a live lesson or set it up to be
student paced. Then you have different options for how you can share the link
directly to students. Just like Pear Deck and Slido, students don't actually need
to have Nearpod accounts in order to use the program. And then once students get
the link, either from Google Classroom or another way that
you're sharing it with them, they can enter directly into the Nearpod lesson
and proceed through the slides at their own pace, if you set it up that way. So
here you can see that the student is able to play the video that I embedded
on the slide and then on the next slide, they're able to answer the question
about what they learned while watching the video and post that to a bulletin
board. Then for the Draw It prompt, students have different drawing tools that they
can use in order to draw their response and then for the field trip function,
students can look around at the 360 degree image or they can choose the
virtual reality option, in order to see this in VR. Then for the fill in the
blanks, you'll see that students have different keywords that they can drag
into the sentence and to end, there's a multiple choice question that students
can answer to show what they've learned in the lesson. And right after students
respond, they'll be able to see whether or not they got the answer to that
question correctly. Okay so those were must have Google Slides add-ons for
teachers. Some obviously are much more involved with others, but I think each
one is worth taking a look at whether you're looking to improve the appearance
of your Google Slides, to add different features to them, or to totally change
the functionality of a Google Slides lesson and make them more interactive. If
you have any questions or comments about any of these add-ons, please ask in the
comments below. Thank you so much for watching my video to the end. If you
found the tips that I shared helpful, please share it with other teachers that
you know, hit the like button, and subscribe to my channel and hit the
notification bell to make sure you don't miss any of my weekly updates. You can
also check out some of the other tutorials I have on my channel by
clicking on one of those two videos above and if you're interested in
downloading any of the resources that I've created and show on my videos,
please visit my website at www.newedtechclassroom.com. Lastly,
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