Life beyond PowerPoint: the best online presentation software

Those ever-lovin’ slide presentations can be made easier online

By Steve Hargadon -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2008

Also in this article: Google Presentations ThinkFree Zoho Show Other Presentation Programs

For better or worse, PowerPoint is de rigueur in the classroom. If we have to live with slide shows, why not ramp things up with a hipper, online version?

Google Presentations
docs.google.com

Google Presentations, the search engine giant’s new Web-based presentation software, engenders the confidence that all things Google seem to inspire, along with the very nice folder and filing capabilities of Google Docs. Google continually refines its products, so one can expect the same with Presentations, which is currently quite spartan, offering only basic slide-show capabilities. While you can import existing projects, insert images, and integrate themes, it’s missing a slew of features, including clip art, drawing, transition effects, audio, and exporting to PPT files.

ThinkFree
www.thinkfree.com
ThinkFree has a decidedly commercial feel, although you can accumulate up to 1GB of personal storage before being charged. But their model of porting traditional office software to the Web for a fee has the advantage of coming with tech support. However, it’s a bit more complex than other Web-based programs. For starters, loading ThinkFree Show is more onerous than simply opening a browser window. And to use all of ThinkFree Show’s features, your computer must run certain software and at adequate speed. Once in the program, ThinkFree looks very much like the Microsoft version it is intended to replace and is the only online program I tested that offers slide transitions. Still, ThinkFree lacks the ease of use one expects of a 2.0 program.

Zoho Show
show.zoho.com
While both Google Presentations and Zoho Show provide a chat feature while displaying a project, Zoho does it one better, allowing users to embed their project on a blog or Web site. This feature alone merits attention, but there’s more. While, like the other programs mentioned, it lacks the ability to export to any format other than HTML, create page transitions, or add an audio track, Zoho Show offers great features: a robust set of shapes and symbols, included clip art, slide notes, video embedding, a slide-sorting view, and a decent font library. However, Zoho plans to charge for nonpersonal use sometime in the future. So it’s difficult to wholeheartedly recommend putting your life’s work there.

Other Presentation Programs
The interface is a bit confusing at first glance, but Spresent lets you add audio and Web media and export to Flash. Composr from Empressr also allows exporting to Flash, but it’s still too new to recommend.

Author Information

Steve Hargadon is the director of the K–12 Open Technologies Initiative for the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and founder of the Classroom 2.0 social network.

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