Google Slides – A Cool Tool for Everybody

As anybody that has been in a classroom or business conference room in the last 10 years knows, many spaces in which somebody is presenting information have some sort projection technology installed. It may be an interactive white board, LCD projector or even the growing use of interactive LED flatscreens. (Interesting summary here on one analyst’s view of what’s going to happen to interactive whiteboards in North America over the next few years.)

So instead of telling you what you already know about the importance and utility of some sort of presentation package, I’m going to instead do a bit of comparison between Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint. I’m going to leave Keynote and Prezi out of the comparison. I seldom dip into the Mac world, so I don’t know much about Apple’s presentation tool, Keynote, to help. The quick checks I found on Prezi seem to indicate it’s growing in use, but seems to lag the “big three” in use. Check out others comparisons here or here.  By no means are these the only choices out there.  Check this list out for other options. Even better, check out Saleh’s review of Visual.ly, Mike’s reviews of emaze and Haiku Deck, or Andrew’s review of Presetrain.

Cost Comparison Between Slides and PowerPoint

Traditional PowerPoint (PP) comes as either a purchased static download ($150 in the Office bundle) or as a purchased subscription that will keep your downloaded versions continually updated and provide 1TB of cloud storage ($70/year for one device and $100/year for up to 5 devices). PowerPoint Online (PPOL) is a free version of PP, albeit a stripped-down version.

Slides is free with a Google account. The Google account is also free, giving you a Gmail address, Google Calendar, 15GB of free cloud storage with Drive. Adding up to 1TB of cloud storage to your Google Drive is going to run the same $100/year as Microsoft Office 365 subscription.

Partridge and pear tree sold separately.

Lot of info there, but what do I think? I really wouldn’t give either an advantage. If you only make a couple presentations every once in a while and you already have a Google account, Slides is probably a good choice. If you use word processing, spreadsheets and presentation tools and can use the 1TB of cloud storage, you might want to consider traditional PP.

There are obvious privacy concerns that you must weigh when getting “free” stuff on the interweb, but those discussions are well beyond what I want to talk about.

Accessibility Comparison

Again, this will depend on what PowerPoint you consider. To create most documents, you’re probably going to be on a laptop, desktop or netbook. Mobiles like tablets and phones are probably best for reviewing and minor editing. With that said, Slides and PPOL both require access to the internet to either work with or just access the files. Downloaded versions of PP give you the freedom of creating and editing presentations anywhere, as long as you have your bigger device. PP gets the advantage for people on the move. Creating beautiful lesson presentations can’t be done in the park unless it is covered by Wi-Fi or you want to chew up some of your mobile data plan.

This is a personal choice. If you’re nearly always around Wi-Fi, it’s about a wash. If your favorite quiet place to work has spotty coverage, the downloaded PP might be better.

Ease of Use

Really, I don’t see much of a difference. Both apps look, feel and navigate nearly the same. It’s almost as if Google did that on purpose.

Features

Things separate a bit here.  PPOL has fewer features than Slides. Slides has fewer than PP. But how many do you really need?  PP has a built-in equation editor that works well with a stylus and touch screen. Slides has an available add-on that isn’t nearly as effective.  PP has a ton of icons, clip art shapes and the like built in. Slides is going to take you directly to the web for the search (almost as if Google has a vested interest in getting you to search). Dropping pictures from your device or cloud storage is about the same for either.  

Either has the capability of making many different presentations. PP is more feature rich, but it depends on why you’re using the tool.

Pretty Stuff

PP has a much large built in library of presentation templates and themes. And there is way more third-party material to augment what they have. Slides has some basics, they look good and you can vary them a bit. There is enough to keep things from always looking the same, but the selection is limited.

Integration

Slides is limited to YouTube for inserting video. It’s super duper easy, but a bit limiting. PP has the same easy interface to adding video as Slides, but you also can add video files in different formats (mpeg, mp4 and the like) directly from your device or cloud storage as well as linking to other video sites.

PP allows use of audio files. Neither Slides nor PPOL can deal with them. For slides you need to work around it by turning your audio into a video, linking the video and making it invisible when playing. Yuck. If you want to have audio during your presentation, stick with PP. If you don’t need it, Slide will still work for you.

Slides will allow you to convert a presentation into PP format and download it so it’s available for a PP user to open and edit. You can also import PP files into slides.

Collaboration

This is the area where Slides shows its mettle.  When shared, Slides allows multiple people can be working on different parts of the same files at the same time. This makes Slides a great tool for students and an educator might want to encourage their students to use it. Version control is a bit more complicated with PP; it’s design is more of a file owner with others contributing and suggesting. The owner has control over what revisions by contributors are accepted. I can see where teachers would have their students use Slides for projects but use PP for their stuff.

All in all, Slides is an effective presentation tool for teachers presenting content and for students creating content. It’s not flexible as PP, but it has the basics for putting together a presentation deck. If our getting fancy or using a lot of media, consider a different package