Technology and Social Media Training for School Nurses Blog Series Post #5 by Kim Webb

Happy Tech Tuesday! Today I want to talk about the fabulous tool: Google Slides. Google slides is marketed as a program similar to Microsoft PowerPoint. 
A school nurse may want to utilize this for the following:

• Presentations to share with families online on topics like food allergies, asthma management during covid, and more.
• Presentations to share with staff on illness guidelines, coronavirus, health office updates, and more.
• The creation of fliers to either be printed or sent out as PDFs or other file formats
• The creation of fun things like a bitmoji health office, a photo slide show, a scavenger hunt, or a virtual library

Things created on Google slides can be shared in a variety of ways, from their original format as a slide show, to on a school nurse webpage, as a link in a newsletter or even downloaded and shared as a PDF. Research shows that parents want to be engaged with their school community in a variety of ways, so using this tool is a great way to connect with families in a new way.
 
I am going to first discuss how to make a presentation stand out and then I will cover some fun ways you can use Google Slides.
 
To get started you will need a google account. First, if you don’t have a google account you will need to create one. Instructions on that can be found HERE. Next, you will go to slides.google.com. You will see that Google slides provide a variety of templates to help you get started. My first suggestion is to look through there to see if there is one already created for what you are looking to do.

From there it works similar to the PowerPoint program many people are familiar with.
Some tips on creating a presentation that stands out:

• Keep a simple and consistent format throughout the presentation
  • Same font type, headings and main text the same size, simple background and color scheme
• Bullet points are your friends
  • Fewer words, allow for larger fonts and better readability
• Use high-quality graphics that you have permission to use
  • Websites like https://unsplash.com/, https://pixabay.com/ and https://www.pexels.com/ offer free images you can use. I still recommend putting under the picture a label with where it came from.
• Avoid transition effects
  • Even though they can be fun, they take away from the professional feel of a presentation.
    
    

Now I would like to just briefly touch on some of the fun things you can do with Google Slides.
 
Fliers/Handouts
You can change the size of the slide you are working on to be the same size as a normal 8x10 sheet of paper. You do this by opening up a blank slide file, click on file and then go all the way down to page setup. It will bring up the below screen where you can click on the little down arrow where it says widescreen and then change it to custom. Then you can make it an 8x10! This ensures that whatever you make will print out nicely.

Another fun thing is you can add in links anywhere. Below is an example of a flyer I made for a virtual event. By using the shape tool , You can put a box around whatever you want to become a link. After you put the shape around it, you find the hyperlink button that looks like . Click on the shape and then click on the hyperlink button and it will ask you to put in the website you want it to go too. You can add any web link, calendar link, or even a zoom link here.

If you save these fliers as PDFs all of your links will still work and then there is no worrying about sharing your original document with anyone.