Organize your Powerpoints online.

Powerpoint. If you are anything like me, you might have some strong and mixed opinions about Powerpoint. I mean, why do people put so much text on their slides. If they are giving me a presentation, then give a presentation. Don't read your note cards to me. And what is with all of those crazy animations. Any teacher that has used Powerpoint with students, knows just how distracting all the bells and whistles of Powerpoint can be. I could go on and on, but I won't because that is not the purpose of this post.

The point is, I use Powerpoint with my classes despite my love-hate relationship with the misunderstood Microsoft application. I also like to have a way for my students to access my slideshows after class. There are many reasons for wanting to do this, and no matter what yours may be, there is a great Web 2.0 resource that makes sharing presentation files easy.

Slideshare is an online community where members are able to upload slideshows and save them to a free account. You can also search presentations from other users. Once you have uploaded your presentations, you can control privacy settings and download permissions for viewers. You can give students a link to your Slideshare account and they will have access to all of your presentations. My school's website allows teachers to post documents for students to download, but I find Slideshare much easier for students because they do not need to download anything. Students are able to watch the presentations right on the Slideshare website, making it easy for them to switch from one slideshow to another. If you have a blog or website for your students, Slideshare will allow you embed a presentation pack right into your site or blog. Like this...

| Get your Presentation Pack

You are also able to tag your slideshows with descriptors so that you can create separate presentation packs with different slideshows for different classes.   Any presentation pack that you have will automatically update when you upload new slideshows to your Slideshare account.

If you use Powerpoint, defintely check out slideshare, or this sample account.   It's FREE!