Finding & Sharing Presentations

As mentioned previously there are a number of specific search engines that can help you find Powerpoint presentations that may be available online. In addition to these search engines you may also want to access two social media sites Scribd.com and SlideShare.com. Both are free sites and allow full searching of their online content, but once you register you can also use the site as a virtual site to store and share your presentations. For example, I set up a site Regis University School of Physical Therapy that now contains several research posters and slide presentations from our student research night from last spring. Each uploaded item can then be shared with others via a link. In addition, each item can have specific permissions associated with it such as view only or downloadable, which gives users control over how their content is viewed or used.

Another nice feature of these sites is that they provide a number of ways in which you can share presentations with others. One way is to embed the presentation into a blog or web page. These embedded presentations can then be viewed on that site, shareed with others, or even taken and re-embedded on your own site or as a Facebook post. For example, here is an embedded presentation that I sent to my family yesterday that given some context to the earthquake in Haiti (just use the controls below the image to go forward or backward in the presentation:

Haiti Earthquake 12 January 2010

View more presentations from kevinrchapman.

I hope you take some time to explore these sites for content that may help your students and you. Feel free to reply to this post with some favorites.

Tim

5 PowerPoint Search Engines To Seek Out Publicly Available Presentations

5 PowerPoint Search Engines To Seek Out Publicly Available Presentations

This link gives a very nice overview on how to use presentation-specific search engines to find Powerpoint files on the web. Also, did you know that using the Advance Search link on Google search page you can limit your searches to specific file extensions, such as the .ppt file extenstion for Powerpoint files?

While you may not find the perfect presentation for your first day of class next week (if only it were that easy), you may find helpful content or even design ideas from existing presentations.

Next time I will share two sites that are not only helpful in searching for presentations, but are also site where you can upload your existing presentations for the world to see.


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Education and Powerpoint Presentations

For better or worse, the use of Powerpoint presentations remains one of the most common content delivery mechanisms in education. Walk down the halls outside lecture halls at Regis and it is likely that a computer connected to an LCD projector is showing some variation of text from a Powerpoint presentation. While the use of Powerpoint and other presentation graphics software remains high, there are many who feel that Powerpoint contributes to poor presentations or worse.

Over the next several weeks we will be posting some resources that highlight the need for better presentation design, ways in which to improve presentations using Powerpoint and alternative software/websites, and how to perhaps move beyond Powerpoint as the cornerstone of content delivery.

Tomorrow we will start of the series by showing where to find existing presentations that may be living on web ready to be seen and even edited by faculty and students.