Everyslide = SlideShare+Socrative

Disclaimer right from the get go. I haven’t played with EverySlide a lot. So  . . . head over, try it yourself, and let me know what you think. But based on the amount of time that I’ve had to mess with it, EverySlide seems like a handy tool to have hanging off your tool belt.

At its most basic level, EverySlide is a web-based tool that lets you share your presentation slides with whomever you want. So it’s a lot like SlideShare or Issuu. Upload your slides, share a link, people can view the slides anywhere/anytime.

But there is a difference.

EverySlide also has a little bit of Socrative or Kahoot embedded in it. It’s designed to be a live presentation tool so that whenever you’re talking, your participants follow along on their own devices. You can still project your slides but the idea is that you control the flow of the preso from your device. Kids do have the option to go back and review slides you’ve already covered but they can’t go forward.

And here’s the kicker.

As you’re presenting, you can create questions and quizzes to gather real-time assessment data from your kids during your presentation and then adjust on the fly. Kids aren’t making sense of the three causes of World War One that you just discussed? Go back and review. After the presentation, you can then download all of the answers from all of your kids for a permanent record of their answers.

It’s a SlideShare slash Socrative kinda tool.

Start by signing up for a free teacher account and completing the requested information. Pretty simple. This is the part of the process I’m not real clear about. There is also a College Student account option and you can also request a K-12 registration link for your students.

Not real sure what the K-12 registration link does for kids. FAQs seem to suggest that with the free registration code, kids get a free account that allows them to “attend” your presentations which then go into an “Attended” area in their account providing the anywhere/anytime access. Which would be handy. But kids don’t need accounts to view your preso and take your quiz. They don’t even need an account to view past presentations so kinda lost on the reason for K-12 registration codes. (I’ve got a call into their Help Desk – will let you know what I find out.)

Once you’ve created your account, upload Powerpoints or PDF versions of Keynotes and you’re good to go. Once uploaded, click the play button on a specific presentation and share the six letter code that appears at the top of your screen with kids. They open a browser on any smart device, type in everyslide.com/thespecificcodeyoujustgavethem, and they’re in.

Your screen with access code across the top

During the presentation, you can ask True/False, Multiple Choice, and Wordcloud questions. (The Wordcloud option lets you asks kids to think of words and then combines all of the words into a Wordle-ish looking cloud. Pretty cool.) You also have the very cool option of having students use their devices to click or tap on their screens to indicate a specific spot. So . . . let’s say you have a slide with a map of 1861 United States on it. You ask kids to brainstorm the best places to set up a Union blockade of the Confederacy and then tap that spot on their devices.

You can then see, on your device, where your kids have tapped. These feature would work with maps, photos, primary source documents such as letters, ads, infographics, just about anything visual.

You also have the option to creating and sharing instant polls and quizzes without associating them with a presentation.

By default, all of your presentations are private – viewable only when you are presenting and the viewer has the secret code. To make them public and viewable anywhere/anytime, you can click the “Let anyone present your slides” button from your list of presentations. You then get an unique URL to share and your presentation becomes searchable in the EverySlide database. (This works even if your kids don’t have a registration code / account with an “Attended” area as mentioned above. Yeah. A bit confusing.)

This searchable feature works for you as well. Search the database using keywords and you might find a ready-made presentation perfect for your class. Grab it and it shows up on your own personal presentation list, available for your own use and quizzes.

But hey . . . I haven’t had time to use this with kids yet. It looks kinda cool and it looks like it can support historical thinking. Maybe in the real world, it’s gonna be a train wreck. Give it a try and let me know.