Teachers and students can do amazing things with Google Slides and Google Drawings! Let’s take a look at how to use these two great apps to be creative and to collaborate! You’ll get to take part in making a digital booklet and fashioning an interactive digital poster. That’s in addition to seeing an array of fantastic ways of putting Slides and Drawings to good use. Inventive ideas include publishing collaborative alphabet books, editing images, constructing timelines, creating infographics, publishing newsletters, and making narrated presentations. Note that many of these ideas work best on a computer and won't necessarily work smartphones and tablets.

Glanceable Graphics

Graphic Organizers

• 15 Free Google Drawings Graphic Organizers from Ditch That Textbook

• Make your own graphic organizer and Share as View so that students can make a copy without changing your template

• Here's how to force users to make a copy of a shared Google Doc (works for Drawings too)

More Ideas for Drawings

• Use Google Drawings like ThingLink (by adding hyperlinks to an image)

• Google Drawings Magnetic Poetry from ShakeUpLearning

• Use Google Drawing for Math Manipulatives

• Creating Math Manipulatives

• Interactive Clock Face with Google Drawings

• Easy Poster Projects with Google Drawings

• 8 Great Infographic Templates for Google Apps

• Slideshow by Sylivia Duckworth

Comics

• Use callouts from the Shape tool to add speech bubbles

• Here are directions for using Google Drawings (and the same can be done in Google Slides)

Templates

• Awesome Google Apps Template for Teachers: Magazine, Certificate, Infographic, Instagram & Wanted Poster

• Fictional Twitter account template

• Meme in Google Drawings

Collaborative Book

• Create one Google Slides document your whole class will share

• Add a slide for each student or each group

• Optionally create an index slide that links to the other slides

• Share the document with students and assign a slide number

• Idea: Students use Vocaroo.com to record audio and add links to slides

• Go to File > Publish to the web to get embed code for your website

Make an index slide by inserting a table with names or topics. Then link each item to its slide. See examples below.

Image Maps

Creating a collaborative Google Slides presentation where students each have their own slide? Create a slide for each student. Then use the Polyline tool to outline each student. Link each shape to the student's slide. Select all the shapes and give them a transparent outline and fill. When in Present view, each person's photo is a clickable hotspot.

Interactive Slideshows

• Create Interactive Google Presentations: Quizzes, Adventures, & Jeopardy

• Interactive Quiz (example by Eric Curts)

• Dragon Quest (Choose Your Own Adventure example)

Narrations

• Record voice as you present a slideshow using the Screencastify Chrome extension

• Saves to Google Drive where you can get a shareable link to the video file

Mind Maps

• Shapes can be connected with links in Drawing and Slides by dragging a line a purple dot on a shape

• Use arrow keys to nudge shapes

• Hold down shift while arrowing to nudge precisely

• Google Drawings Mind Map Tips

Newsletters

• File > Page Setup to 8.5 x 11 if you want a typical newsletter format

• File > Publish to web and embed into your website - update in Slides and your website is automatically updated!

• Examples: Rocklin High Ed Tech Newsletter, Lakeland Elementary School Technology Newsletters and Hudson Middle School