Want a LIVE Q&A With Your Audience Using Google Slides? You Already Have One! Click Here to Find Out How to Use It!

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Presenter View is a feature made by Google that is used with Google Slides. Some of its options range from using custom speaker notes to a live Q&A session with your audience. This can be used if presenting to a large class where taking individual question can take a long time, or if a student has an important question, but doesn't want to interrupt the presentation. This post was so big that it had to be broken into smaller subsections:

To learn how to set up your computer (1 post), click here → Set Up

To learn how to present with Presenter View (3 posts), click here → Presenter

To learn how the audience can ask questions (1 post), click here → Audience

Presenter View Part 2

The Most Efficient Way to Set Up Presenter View

If hooking up to a projector continue reading, but if you plan on presenting using another monitor (for example a TV screen), follow steps 1-4 Here then skip down to “Using Presenter View”. If you’re using a Mac or Apple product, click Here.

This section is here to teach you how to change your display from a mirrored to an extended display. A mirrored display means that whatever you see on your computer will also appear on the projection, while an extended display makes the projection act like a second desktop. “Presenter View” must be used in an extended display, because it requires the projection to show the presentation, and the computer to show the “Presenter View” screen.

Once your computer has been connected to the projector and it has been powered on, press the “Windows” and “P” keys at the same time.

Select “Extend” on the menu that appears:

As the name suggests, this will make your projector act as an extension of your computer screen. If you move your mouse pointer off the right side of your computer screen, it should appear on the projection.

To open the “Presenter View” function, use one of two ways. First, click on the small arrow next to the “Present” button on your slide.

This will open a small drop-down menu. Click on “Presenter View”.

The second method is to first, start the presentation. At the bottom of the screen will be a small button labeled “Q&A”.  

Click on it to begin “Presenter View”.

Both methods will leave you with a screen looking like this:

You must click and drag your presentation off the right side of the screen. To do so, click and drag here on the top of the page:

Lastly, click the “Maximize” button on the “Presenter View” window.

Now you’re all set up to use the “Presenter View” application! If done correctly, you should see the “Presenter View” window on your computer and your presentation as the projection.

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Using Presenter View →

Presenter View Part 3

Using Presenter View

The Presenter View option from Google has 3 main features, managing the presentation, Speaker Notes, and a live Q&A. I have made three subsections of the article, each dedicated to a different section on a different page.

Presentation Management

The management section of Presenter view is on the left edge of the screen.

To change your slide use one of two ways. The first is to use the “Next” and “Previous” buttons:

The second is to click on the bar underneath, which displays your current slide number. When clicked, it will open a drop-down menu which can be used to jump to any slide:

It is important to note that when using Presenter View, the display of your current slide in the upper left-hand side is the only view of your current slide. Thus, you cannot rely on reading from your slide while presenting. For a solution to this problem, see the next page for the “Speaker Notes” section.

Another lesser used function is the timer at the bottom left corner of the screen.

It will begin counting up as soon as Presenter View is activated, and can be paused or reset. This can be used to determine how long a person has been presenting for.

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Presenter View Part 4

Speaker Notes

While using Presenter View, you can not read directly off your slide due to the only display being too small. But Google incorporated a solution to this problem, Speaker Notes.

A Speaker Note is written text that can’t be seen by the audience, used to assist speakers while presenting. To create one, you must begin by being in the editing screen for your slide. Then, click on the text below your slide that says, “Click to add speaker notes”. Proceed to type whatever you want your note to say. This must be done for each individual slide.

To use Speaker Notes, have Presenter View up and running then click the “Speaker Notes” tab at the top.

While using the Speaker Notes, it will automatically display the notes you’ve written for your current slide. You can also increase or decrease the size of the text with the addition sign (+) or the subtraction sign (−).

One thing that is important to note about using Speaker Notes is that you cannot edit your notes while presenting. All notes must be written before you present.

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Presenter View Part 5

Questions and Answers

The live questions and answer, Q&A for short, is the most useful part of Presenter View. This topic will be split up into two subsections, one for how the presenter interacts with the Q&A and the other is how the audience interacts with the Q&A.

Presenter

The Q&A is under the “Audience Tools” tab, at the top of the screen. Q&A’s are broken into sessions, if you have never used it before then the only option is to start a new session, and promptly click the button labeled as such to do so.

When you start a session you will notice a few changes. First, there will be a box above your presentation that reads “Ask a question at...”, followed by a URL.

This is the link that your audience must go to, to ask a question. It does not need to be set up ahead of time, Google will create one for you. To learn about the website the URL leads to, read the “Audience” subsection on the next page.

On your monitor, you will see a blue bar at the top of your screen.

On the left, it will read “Accepting questions from Manchester School District Staff and Students SAU37”. This means that only students using their school-assigned Google accounts may ask questions. To change this, click on the bold and underlined section of the text and this will open a drop-down menu where you can select to have anyone ask a question. Underneath this is a URL, the same one on your slide. On the right of the blue bar is an on/off switch, and when turned off will cause the URL to disappear from your slide and the website it leads to becomes inactive. Doing this does not clear questions previously asked.

When a question is asked by an audience member, it will automatically appear on your Presenter View screen:

All questions asked will also display the name of the person asked, (see the next page for the “Audience” subsection, for instruction on how to ask a question anonymously). Below their name is the time which they asked the question, then the question itself written in bold. Under that is how many likes or dislikes the question has from other audience members, continue to the next page to learn more about likes/dislikes. Below that is a button that reads “Present”, clicking this will cause the question to appear on the slide like so:

Their question will be displayed on the presentation, with their name at the bottom. To return to the presentation click on the same button again, which will now be green and read, “Hide”.

If you have recently used Presenter View for the same presentation, instead of creating a new session, a second button will be added to “Continue recent”. If you decide to continue, you will see a list of all your recent sessions that you may select from. You will only be able to continue a presentation session between 1 and 12 hours after it is complete. (From my personal experience and research, this is as close as an estimate that I can make). The only difference between continuing a presentation and starting a new session is that upon continuing a session all questions asked during that session will still be visible.

Another useful feature is being able to view any question asked from any session, but this can only be done while editing the presentation. While editing the slide, click on the “Tools” tab at the top of the screen.

From the drop-down menu, select “Q&A history”.

A box will appear on the right side of the screen where you can select any session that has ever been created to view those questions.

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Presenter View Part 6

Audience

When you type the URL given by the slide into Google, it will take you to a website where you can ask questions:

1. This is the area that you type your question into.
2. If you click on this box, your question will be asked anonymously and everyone (including the presenter) won’t be able to tell who asked the question. This can be useful if a student is too shy to have his/herself singled out on the presentation.*
3. This is your character counter, you have a maximum of 300 characters.
4. These are the “Cancel” and “Submit” button. The “Cancel” button will cancel your question, the “Submit” button will post your question on the website and on the “Presenter View” screen.
5. This is another question that has been asked. All questions that have been asked are visible to the audience, not just the presenter.
6. Other audience members can like or dislike your questions. This can be viewed by the presenter.

“Presenter View” from Google is an excellent way to take your slideshows to the next level. If you have any trouble with “Presenter View” a link to Google Support is provided below.

Google Support → https://support.google.com/search?q=presenter+view

*A common concern from teachers is the fact that questions can be asked anonymously. One feature that is easily forgotten is that the teacher acts as a buffer between the questions and the presentation. For instance, if an inappropriate question were asked, even anonymously, other audience members would be able to see it on the website but the teacher can choose to simply ignore it.

*~Bonus Feature~*

When presenting a slideshow made in Google, down in the bottom left corner of the screen is a button that says “Pointer”. Click it to turn your mouse pointer into a laser pointer!

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