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It has been awhile since w​e last spoke. As we have found our footing in this new world, I have so many awesome updates to talk about, especially with PowerPoint, and they just keep coming. In this new world of remote learning, and as teachers are trying to figure out how to teach remotely, PowerPoint has accelerated their backend work to introduce PowerPoint Live along with a host of other tools.

PowerPoint Live

If you’ve not heard yet, PowerPoint has been making strides to become the best tool for presentations around. Sure, you can do fancy things with a tool like Prezi or embed with a tool like Google Slides. But nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to what PowerPoint is now capable of.

PowerPoint Live is a presentation tool where audience members can see a presentation using any of their personal devices and while watching the presentation, add subtitles in their preferred language in real time. The tool allows for users to choose subtitles in 60+ languages. Even better, the more often the tool is used, the better the Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) gets at translating your voice in real time. Every user watching the presentation can choose a different language!

For teachers using this tool with students, another cool point to PowerPoint Live is that students can review previous slides while keeping up in the presentation. Within PowerPoint Live, students can give live feedback. As the teacher, you will receive feedback on your presentation from a short survey asking about your slide design, speaker’s skills, the content and interactions with audience and comments. It’s a basic scale, but it is great for you, as a presenter. You will get the results of the survey that you can check out in your email.

One thing to note with PowerPoint Live –  you will need to go screen sharing mode instead of presentation mode or you will not be able to start Live Presentations.

Forms and PowerPoint

Another way to engage your students with PowerPoint is to add a Microsoft Form inside your PowerPoint. It is really straightforward to add a Form, since it’s located right in the middle of the insert bar. What is great is you can either use an already created form or create on the spot. Students will answer the questions on the slides, the results go to forms, and now you have a quick check, formal or informal quiz that will help you gather data from your class.

Presenter Coach

It is always worth mentioning this awesome tool again and again. The Presenter coach is one of the greatest improvements to PowerPoint. Presenter coach is an A.I. powered tool designed to help those who present become better presenters. You can find this tool on PowerPoint Online and it is amazing. The first time I used it, I tried every mistake I could think of while practicing with PowerPoint. The program showed me what I needed to improve on by letting me know when I was reading the slides, using language that was not inclusive, and it caught me muttering and saying “umm” a lot.

This tool is one that is not to be missed. At the end of your presentation it gives you a printout of the things that you should work on before you present again, and just like all A.I., it learns your speech patterns and improves as you improve. 

Why use it? If it was not convincing enough above, think about all the ways that this tool can release anxiety related to presenting. For students who can become nervous when it comes to presenting, being able to practice and get real, actionable feedback is invaluable. As an Office 365 user, you need to use this tool! Look at this video below to learn more!  

Other PowerPoint Updates and Useful Tools for Remote Learning

Recording

One thing you can do with PowerPoint is to turn PowerPoints into videos by recording audio onto slides, audio, and video onto slides, or even do a screen recording with PowerPoint. When you are recording slides, you can do ink gestures, which means you can write on the screens a la Khan Academy.

Education Templates

If you go to https://templates.office.com​ you can access free Templates for slides, word documents and Excel forms. These could be helpful to you in organizing your class and assignments and many of them are free.
Let me know what you think by leaving comments below.