Readers Note: I do not have a paid affiliation with any site mentioned in this blog post.
I love a good theme during a presentation, be it face-to-face or virtual. It’s one of the things that catches my eye and keys me into what kind of presentation I will be viewing; informative or fun. I will search through pages of sites like the ones below to find just the right template and will often save others for future projects. Some people love getting as many fonts as possible. For me, it’s all about the template theme! Here’s an updated look at some free sites that provide all the templates you could ever want!
Slides Carnival
Once my all time favorite template site, this one has slid to #2 on my list. I like that there are a large amount of choices that can be downloaded as both PowerPoint or Google Slides. Some of my personal favorites include “Salerio”, and you may recognize “Mowbray” and “Talbot” from previous videos on my YouTube channel. I’ve also used “Jachimo”, “Olivia” and “Puck” for previous presentations. Another great feature that I like is that Slides Carnival provides additional icons on the very last few slides of each template, as well as, attribution information for copyright and citations.
In an older post, I shared that the site had started providing templates for Canva too; but returning to the site recently, I can’t find any mention of this. It may be because Canva has created many of their own templates during the last year.
Canva
Speaking of Canva, I recently attended a webinar for educators and I was greatly impressed with how this site has grown. I mostly use it to create graphics for my school’s and my own social media, but their templates are AMAZING! Paired with other new features, like effects and animation and app integrations with Pexels, Pixabay, and Bitmoji, this makes it easy for busy teachers! Plus, you can create classes with an Educator account, allowing students to design their own presentations and turn in all one place.
SlidesMania
This site has become my number 1 favorite! I use it for everything and it’s creator Paula Martinez is amazing! She will literally create anything. If you watch my Tech Tuesday series on YouTube, you’ve heard me rave about her there! She continually adds templates every week. She also just open a new site called IconsMania where you can get all the icons you could ever want!
This site has more creative templates out of all the sites, ones that would work for any subject area and grade levels, ever for our littlest of learners. I really like “Classified” as it would work well for a digital breakout or a creative lesson where students are turned into detectives or spies. “Heikes” is another fun one as is “Koch” that is suited for a cartoon in space, along with others that are themed for The Wizard of Oz or Harry Potter. She also has created an entire collection of digital notebook and planner themes to help you and your students stay organized or show off their work. SlidesMania is also one of the few sites that contains seasonal templates for holidays.
Like SlidesGo, Paula provides video tutorials to show users how to create stickers, overlays, and other effects such as snow and how to edit her templates for your own use. If you haven’t seen it yet, definitely check out her video on editing the master template.
Slides Go
This is another great choice with categories of templates for education, business, medical or general multi-purpose use. I like that the site provides a Tips and Tutorials section that shows users how to edit templates to suit their needs or how to create concept maps, timelines, charts and more.
Just like Slides Carnival, templates are available for both Google Slides and PowerPoint. They have a nice collection of educational templates that are themed to subject areas like Biology or Geography and also offer themes for events like Back to School or promoting cultural diversity. However, the last time I visited this site, (and it’s been awhile), all of these templates were free. Now there’s a limit of downloading 10 templates a month and some of the themes are caught behind the cost of a premium account, so be aware before falling in love with a template!
As of this publication date, the site is having a sale on their premium annual accounts. At 50% off, the cost for an annual account is $2.00 per month. The cost for a month to month account at the regular price is $5.99.
Wakelet
During Wakelet’s annual Community Week this year, I was stunned to learn about how many wonderful template resources they have! These templates are built both by the company itself and users of the site and are broken down into categories from newsletters to lesson plans, collaboration, and guides to help students. It is really is impressive, even if I’m a biased Wakelet Ambassador! If you have your own template to share, post it on social media and tag @Wakelet.
Slides Gala
Slides Gala has templates for both PowerPoint and Google Slides, plus Keynote for Macs, something most template sites do not offer. Some of their templates can also strangely be found on other sites, such as “Wart” and “Dion”, which are named “Warm Triangles” and “Vintage Geography” respectively on Slides Carnival. However, I like that they have other more professional looking templates that some of the sites listed here don’t have such as “Red Aesthetics”, “Cymbeline” and “Callie”. You can search through categories like creative, playful, formal or elegant to find the right one for you.
Slide Salad
This site has a ton of templates, however unlike the other sites not all of these templates are free. Some templates are as much as $70! But don’t fear, you can check out all of their free templates for Google Slides, PowerPoint and Keynote. The free templates available are geared more towards business than education, but I think templates such as “Circular”, “Perfection” and “Concept” are suitable.
If you want to check out some of their templates with a fee, now’s the time as it looks this site is also having a sale on select templates.
My Perfect Presentation
This brand new template site recently came to my attention on Twitter, thanks to Tony Vincent. Two 10th grade students decided to make their own site after not being to make suggestions about templates. According to their site, “that’s when we decided to step in and create our own website using templates from the suggestions of users”.
They have templates in a variety of topics and will even design custom templates based on your specifications. I’m pretty impressed with their collection and their entrepreneurship skills. This would be a good site to have students visit too.
Templates for Teachers
This site is created by two teachers who created templates for their classes. After being asked by colleagues if they could use the templates and adapt for their content area, they created this site to share their templates with a larger audience. You can search for templates by category or even view templates created by others and added to the site. On the “How To” page, get tips for how you can adapt these templates for your own use.
The site was featured on The Shake Up Learning Podcast and you can take a listen to the episode to hear more about creating templates.
Creative Market
Creative Market was recommended to me by a national presenter a couple of years ago as a place to get quality looking templates with both paid and free options. It doesn’t have nearly the amount of free options I would like, but if you need something extremely professional looking this is the place to go. Most templates are priced at about $15.
Once a week on Mondays, they open up six free designs available for download, however they are not all templates for Google Slides or PowerPoint. They also include templates for Instagram stories or other social media, fonts and graphics. You will need to create a free account to download. Check out their free goods section for what’s available. You can also sign up for their weekly newsletter that previews what free templates will be open that week.
Ms Priester EDU 