Google Slides Q&A: The Age Of 'Death By Powerpoint' Now Over? [VIDEO]
For people who have experienced the dreaded "Death by PowerPoint," Google's latest update to its popular Slides app would come as a welcome addition. Starting Thursday, users of Google Slides would start seeing an additional feature to the app, called Slides Q&A. Using the new feature, presenters would be able to receive questions and general feedback from their audience in real-time, while the presentation is going on.
Conventionally, PowerPoint presentations involve a lecture from a presenter and a separate Q&A session from the audience. This usually involves having one of the audience go up to a microphone to address a particular question about the presentation. Such practices are time-consuming and are inherently limited to only a few questions per presentation.
Through the Slides Q&A feature, this problem is completely bypassed. After all, the core of the update is enhancing the interactiveness of a presentation, something which lecturers and audiences always appreciate.
With Slides Q&A, audience members would be able to ask questions as the presenter is lecturing. They could also vote for which questions must be addressed by the presenter first. Indeed, such a functionality, though simple in nature, is undoubtedly a welcome addition to any presentation. If any, Slides Q&A would give smartphone users something useful to do while listening to a lecture.
But that is not all. Apart from Slides Q&A, Google is also rolling out two additional, innovative features to the app. One of these features gives presenters the ability to present slides to Hangouts from an iPhone and iPad, while the other is a virtual laser pointer.
Just like Slides Q&A, the updates are relatively simple; yet, they are quite invaluable for presenters. After all, the life of a presentation usually lies in just how well a presenter is able to connect to the audience. Using Google's latest tools all but assures that.
Google actually rolled out a similar tool a couple years back, called Moderator. Just like Slides Q&A, Moderator offered a rather similar crowdsourced Q&A service. The initial run for the feature was not very successful, however, and Moderator was discontinued back in July 2015.
Slides Q&A could be accessed by presenters through the "Audience Tools" button on the app. The update is set for a global rollout to iOS, Android and Web app users starting Thursday.
