Google Slides Q & A - Collect audience questions

Google Slides is a very good free presentation tool.  It is particularly good if you want to:

1. Collaborate with multiple presenters to build a slide deck
2. Present to a worldwide audience via Google Hangout
3. Present from a mobile device like a smartphone

And now Slides has added a new feature that makes it incredibly useful for almost any presentation setting.  Slides now can allow for collection of questions during a presentation. You can read more about this feature here, or watch the following video:

The steps are pretty straightforward:

1. Create/upload a presentation (you can upload a PowerPoint presentation and it will be converted to Slides format 
2. At presentation time, in the upper right corner use the drop down next to "Present" and select "Use new audience Q & A.."
3. Click start new 
4. The URL for the Q & A page will be displayed on your slide.
5. Users can enter questions (anonymously or not)
6. They can vote others' questions up or down
7. You can see the most popular questions and answer them during or at the end of the presentation

This is a great tool to engage your audience and make your teaching more student-centered.

I recently used this tool for the first time at a keynote I was delivering at the Massachusetts General Hospital ECOTE 16 education symposium.  While using this feature was easy, I had a slight wrinkle.  I like PowerPoint due to the granular control on graphics, animations and transitions and also I present using a Surface Pro that lets me write on the slides as I present.  I did not want to give up on this functionality.  

So I ran Google Slides in the background!  I went through the present >> use audience Q/A steps, >> grabbed the URL for submitting questions and pasted this on my intro slide in PowerPoint.

It went like a charm.  I got the best of both worlds -- PowerPoint on a Surface Pro and Google Slides in the background to collect questions!  I was able to answer some of the most popular questions before running out of time.  But I was able to review all the questions that got asked which helps me prepare for a similar talk I might give in the future.

Here is a list of all the questions which I was able to get from the "tools" menu in Google Slides.

NPR segment on Clickers in the Classroom

This "All Tech Considered" segment generated quite a buzz.  There was a comment about the limitations of clickers as they can only support multiple choice questions.  Luckily several comments clarified the concept of how these can be used for needs analysis and for leading to active learning using the Think-Pair-Share technique.  

I use the clickers to poll the audience on questions where there may be no right answer (e.g. ethical issues) and then allow them to discuss the issues amongst themselves and then maybe poll again.  I also create questions on the fly to decide on what the class wants to learn or to make sure they understand  the concepts before moving on to the next step.   I create hyperlinks in the presentation that let me jump directly to a specific topic if indicated by the audience responses.

This helps to keep the learning student-centered.  When used appropriately, the clickers are a wonderful tool!