Getting started with a collaborative Google Slides presentation in Grade 5

This year I wanted to introduce a Grade 5 class to Google Slides in a collaborative way. Last year, with this class, we did a lot of work using Microsoft PowerPoint. I have to say that Microsoft PowerPoint is still one of my favourite applications for all time mainly because of all the different ways you can use it - but using it collaboratively is really not easy at all. Google Slides offers that benefit - so it is becoming a firm favourite.

Lesson goals

I wanted the students to:

• experience how easy it is for a whole class to use one Google document at the same time 
• learn how to share the finished product to their own Google accounts 
• complete the task at home if they didn't finish 
• learn the inns and outs of images, fonts, and background colour

Giving the assignment

Naturally, I created the lesson using Google Classroom. The students opened their Google accounts and logged on to Google Classroom and away we went!

The task
The class had to open the slide presentation I had created and shared in Google Classroom. It had an example slide. Their task:

• add a slide and create something similar 
• write an acrostic poem description of themselves using adjectives 
• add an avatar image they had created in a previous lesson and crop it 
• add their names using WordArt 
• use colour for their selected fonts 
• colour the background

The results 
The class enjoyed this task and they loved looking at each others' completed slides.

Other collaborative lesson ideas for Google slides
Here are three ideas I want to try soon:

• Do a collaborative project in groups 
• Write a collaborative story using Google slides
• Learn how to organise research on a collaborative slide presentation (idea via Richard Byrne's blog)