A slide is a single page of a presentation. Collectively, a group of slides may be known as a slide deck. A Slide show is an exposition of a series of slides or images in an electronic device or in a projection screen.
Contents
- Slides producing software
- Google Slides
- Best uses of slides
- Designing a slide deck
- Slide sharing websites
- The leading slide sharing websites
- E Learning
- References
Before the advent of the personal computer, a presentation slide could be a 35 mm slide viewed with a slide projector or a transparency viewed with an overhead projector.
In the digital age, a slide most commonly refers to a single page developed using a presentation program such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote or Apache OpenOffice/LibreOffice. It is also possible to create them with a document markup language, for instance with the LaTeX class Beamer.
Lecture notes in slide format are referred to as lecture slides, frequently downloadable by students in .ppt or .pdf format.
Slides producing software
Presentation slides can be done by different types of software: Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, LibreOffice Impress, Prezi, SlideDog, ClearSlide, SlideShark, Haiku Deck, Slide Bureau, Powtoon, MediaShout, Kineticast, KnowledgeVision, GoAnimate, Wink, Snagit, Camtasia Studio, CamStudio, Articulate Presenter, SlideShare, VisualBee (which is related to PowerPoint as long as it also produces graphics for it), Emaze, Presaria, Proclaim, Slides and Reallusion,slidebean,nearpod, among others.
Some of the software like PowToon or GoAnimate produce slides with more animation in respect to the other software. In fact, this two software are big competitors in the video animated slides presentation programs. Others like CamStudio can be used to record the screen activity.
The most popular slides producing software are Microsoft PowerPoint, Prezi, Apple Keynote and ClearSlide.
Google Slides
Google Slides is a slides producing software designed by Google. It was developed at the same time as Google Docs and Sheets, in 2007. With them you can create a document and work in real time at the same time as other people.
With Google Slides you have the chance of creating and editing your presentations with coworkers, having the option of publishing your work in the website. Google Slides allows you introducing images and videos into your presentation. The chance of importing .pps and .pptx and converting them into Google presentations and of downloading the presentations in .pdf, .jpg, .txt, .svg or .ppg file.
For further information about how to use it, go to the getting started Google Slides guide.
Best use(s) of slides
When creating and editing slides, you can follow some tips for approaching the best slides.
Designing a slide deck
When it comes to getting started with a slides presentation, the first decision to take is how to design the slide deck. The design of a slide is based on the template chosen for it. Templates are the format that the slides will have, and in the same slide deck, there can only be one same template for all slides. The template is normally set up before starting working on the document. The reason why the template has to be defined before starting editing the slides is because they determine some factors of the slides, which are:
After choosing a template for the slide deck, the next step is selecting how the text is going to look like, which means deciding the size, colour and the type of letter, also if the text is going to be in Italic, Bold or underlined.
After finishing a slides presentation the majority of the software give the possibility of adding transitions and animations to the slides or complementing the slide with sound or visual effects. For example, applying in and out animations, sounds to bullets and motion path to images.
Slide sharing websites
Sharing slide presentations online is helpful for e-Learning, which is the capability of learning electronically, mainly through computers using the internet. As technology develops, with new tablets and smartphones, is a learning method becoming more popular. Websites that enable sharing slides and presentation contribute to e-Learning.
A few of the benefits of slide sharing are:
The leading slide sharing websites
SlideShare allows the user to share presentations publicly or privately. Slides can be uploaded in various ways, via email and through social media are the most common ways of sharing the slides.
AuthorSTREAM only allows the user to upload PowerPoint presentation slides. On this website users can give feedback by rating presentations and posting comments.
SlideBoom turns slide presentations into Adobe Flash for a better accessibility.
SlideOnline allows the user to upload PowerPoint presentations and share them as a web page in any device or to embed them in WordPress as part of the posts comments.
Another way of sharing slides is by turning them into a video. The most common converters are SlideAlloy, Movavi and WonderShare.
E-Learning
The main purpose of sharing slides on the internet is e-Learning. Uploading the presentation to a Learning management system (LMS), which is a software application designed for e-Learning, such as DigitalChalk, is a way of sharing slides into a website, which its main objective is electronic education.
DigitalChalk is an online platform created to upload files such as presentation slides in order to create online courses available for everyone who is willing to pay for them. Courser is another e-Learning platform but for free users. This online platforms are commonly used by companies and organizations to train their staff members.