Welcome to a Rerun episode of Tech Tuesday! In this episode, I’m taking a look at two special features in Google Slides: Q&A and closed captioning.
Q & A FEATURE
Google Slides has all kinds of special uses, but these are two that you may not be aware of. The first one is the Q and A feature that allows your audience to ask questions while you’re presenting. When you go to present, click the drop down arrow next to the present button and select present view. A new pop up window appears with several tools. We’re going to focus on the first tab, with the audience tools, but let’s pause for a second to look at the other tools. The second tab allows you to access your speaker notes while presenting, important for helping you remember key points. On the left side of the screen, you’ll see thumbnails of your current slide and the next one coming up and also be able to select and change slides. Below that, is a timer to help you stay within the time limits of your presentation. Now, let’s go back to the audience tools. To get started, click on “start new”. The window will change and at the top is a link to give to audience members so they can type in questions while you present. The questions will appear for you to see below this link. You also have a toggle button to turn this feature on and off.
HOW THE AUDIENCE ASKS QUESTIONS
Audience members will ask questions by opening their browser and typing in the link. So, let’s act as audience members for a moment and type this in. On this page, you can ask questions throughout the presentation. Questions will post anonymously unless you sign into a Google account with the button in the top right corner. Anyone on the page can see the questions and like or unlike it. The idea here is that if more than one audience member has a similar question, they can like it and “bump” up the popularity of a question and not bog the feed down with similar questions.
PRESENTING QUESTIONS
As the presenter, you can choose which questions to display either in the order they come in or by the number of votes. Click on the “present” button to display the question. Click “hide” to go back to presenting your slides.
USING THIS IN CLASS
Now, you could use this as you lecture in class and have students use the Q & A feature as a sort of back channel as you present or students could use this feature when presenting for a project. Ms. Murphy’s 7th grade Language Arts class recently did process speeches explaining how something worked such as how to wrap a gift or how to make cornbread. At the end of each speech, students asked the one presenting questions about their projects, such as how long it took them to learn something or how they became interested in the topic. Students could have used this feature to call on one another. Of course, you will want to set some ground rules for using this, just like you would anything else. I would recommend having students log in to ask questions and create guidelines about the type of questions they can ask.
CLOSED CAPTIONING
Another new feature recently released is closed captioning in presentation mode where you can display your words in real time at the bottom of the screen. Here’s how this works: In a presentation, click on “present” and once it loads, find the toolbar in the lower left corner, then click on the “cc” button. As I talk the computer’s microphone picks up on my voice and displays my words on the screen. Of course, this will depend on how close you are to the computer. When I tested it, I could get about 4 to 5 feet away from the computer using the internal microphone. If you connect an external microphone you might get a bit more range. Captions will not contain punctuation and right now this feature is only available in English, using the Chrome browser on a computer.
I can see this being very valuable for our ESOL population and helping with fluency. In fact, as I was driving into work this morning I was listening to the Google Teacher Tribe’s latest podcast episode “Tips from the Tribe”, where listeners submitted their own tips for Google Tools. Joe Marquez, a past contributor to the podcast, had this great idea to share, which contributes to fluency: if you are one of those teachers who don’t like teaching from a slideshow or are teaching a concept that doesn’t need a lot of prep, but like the idea of having closed captioning available, create one slide with an image that represents your topic and go into presentation mode and use closed captioning. What a great idea!
If you are also a heavy Pear Deck user, don’t fear, you can still use this feature, you just have to click the “cc” button at the right time. Right after clicking “present” on the Pear Deck Add-on, click the “cc” button in the Slides toolbar. You will have to do this quickly, before Pear Deck has fully loaded. The captions will only appear on the presentation being projected, not on student screens.
Finally, my last tip for this feature, use it with Screencastify (or any screen recording software) so that your entire presentation is recorded along with the closed captions and can be uploaded to your YouTube Channel or LMS such as Canvas for students to review as needed.
APP SPOTLIGHT – FLIPPITY
This episode’s App Spotlight features Flippity.net, a site that allows you to create different activities from the data you add to Google Sheets. You can create activities such as flash cards, a quiz show, timelines, and so much more! I like that they have activities for scavenger hunts and tournament brackets too. With March Madness coming up, it’s always cool to have some kind of competition with student’s favorite books or apps that they can play along with. At the Flippity site, you can explore all of the activities and view demos to see how it works before viewing the instructions and working with the template. Each activity has a template you can edit in Google Sheets. Follow the instructions to know exactly how to create your activity and allow for student access. Students can also create their own activities using the site or the Google Sheets Add-On. You can learn more about the Add-on in the link in the description area.
I hope you enjoyed this rerun episode. How do you think you can use the features from this episode?
Ms Priester EDU 