Here’s a simple trick you can use in Elders Quorum or Sunday School:
I’m a big geek—let’s just get that out in the open. I’m also a big fan of Google Presentations. In fact, sometimes I think I can’t teach without them. I made an awesome slide show for my lesson on The Holy Grail (Charity). But I needed a way for the class to see it.
I started by writing the short URL on the board:
goo.gl/UpUiD
I asked them to load it up in their smart phones.
At the time, I didn’t have a smartphone myself, but I knew a lot of them did. So I asked, “Who doesn’t have a smart phone and also isn’t sitting next to someone who has one?” Only one elder raised his hand. That’s pretty good for a class of about 45. Anyways, you’ll have to judge whether technology is ubiquitous enough in your classroom for this to work. If it doesn’t work now, it should be a solid strategy in a few more years. By the way, most chapels have wifi now—so people can do this with iPods and WiFi tablets too.
They were then able to pull this presentation up on their screens:
We talked about it together, even though we were looking at 20 different screens. And I could easily say, “Who will read Slide 13 for us?”
You can create online presentations with your Gmail account at Drive.Google.com. After you’ve created it, click File>>Publish to make it available to everyone.
It will list a public URL:
Copy that link. Then paste it into goo.gl. It will give you a shortened URL. Write that on the chalk board. And remember, these short URLs are case sensitive : )
If you test this out, I want to hear how it goes. It was an experiment for me, but it went well. Does it work for you?