Creative Uses for Google Slides and Drawings

1. Google Slides

One can quickly describe Slides as the Google version of Microsoft Powerpoint.  Create a slide show to deliver information, support a presentation, and collaborate through the process of creating that presentation.  That is rarely how I have used this in a class setting.

2. Google Drawing

A free space to add whatever you want to the space.  Oddly, I find it easier to insert and not as easy to draw in drawings.  Nevertheless, it is a nice functionality to have.

Slides and Drawings are both programs that have the same basic premise, free space for you to do what you want.  Set up a page and run with it.


There are still the research tools available in docs, but docs likes to format, Slides and Drawings are free format spaces.  Add what you want, move it where you want.

• Use an image as a background - Add an image and make it the size of the slide or drawing space.  Use the arrange option to send it back and format, image options to ,make it more transparent to use an image as a background or slide theme.

• Use hyperlinks to link multiple drawings or make create your own adventure stories.

• Citing images - click on an image, then click and drag the URL of the image to cite it quickly.

Through my training I have come across teachers who have found creative ways of using each of these tools.

• Using Google Drawings as a book report.  Students used the drawing tool to summarize books, provide relevant images and then presented from the single-slide drawing.

• Using Drawings for YOGA sequences - each student was individually responsible for creating a slide for a yoga pose.  Later, they worked with others to link together slides with four other members of the class to create a mini-yoga sequence to teach, present, and walk the class through.

• Pecha Kucha style presentations - presentations made with slides containing a picture or less than 3 words.  Follows a time and slide format I used 6 slides x 10 seconds.

• Newsletters and posters - due to the free flowing space, it is easy to create a newsletter or poster with either a single slide or a drawing, which is simply a single slide.

• Making a website out of a series of google drawings.  Publish a google drawing and it is a webpage.  Link that drawing to other google documents or webpages you make later and you have a series of webpages.  Pretty simple to do and allows students to create effective designs.  I have seen teachers use this for student portfolios if they do not wish to learn google sites and they want students to have an e-portfolio.