Earlier this year I published a rundown of my five favorite Google Slides add-ons. Since then a couple of those add-ons have gone the way of the 5.25″ floppy disk. Fortunately, I’ve recently discovered a couple of new Google Slides add-ons that I really like. Here’s the updated list of my five favorite Google Slides add-ons.
Slido Polls
Slido is a polling service that offers a free Google Slides add-on and companion Chrome extension. The combination of the two tools makes it easy for anyone who uses Google Slides to quickly create and launch polls directly within the Google Slides editor. The thing that I like about Slido is that you can see your students’ responses without having to toggle between presentation and editing modes in Google Slides. Your students’ responses pop-up on the screen in realtime. Your students respond to your Slido poll or survey by simply going to Slido.com on their laptops or phones and then entering the code that appears on your polling slide. Watch my short video below to see how easy it is to create, run, and respond to a poll made with Slido in Google Slides.
Grackle
Grackle is a service that will check your Google Documents, Slides, and Sheets for accessibility. It is available as an Add-on for Google Docs, for Google Slides, and for Google Sheets. When you run Grackle’s accessibility checker it will identify places where your slide doesn’t meet accessibility standards. It makes suggestions for improvement on the areas in which your document, slide, or sheet doesn’t meet accessibility standards. Some of the suggestions can be implemented with just a click from the Grackle Add-on menu while others are changes that you will have to make yourself.
Slides Randomizer
Slides Randomizer is a Google Slides add-on that will randomly shuffle a set of Google Slides. It’s easy to use the Slides Randomizer add-on. Once you’ve installed the add-on simply select Slides Randomizer from the add-ons drop-down menu while viewing your slides then click on “randomize presentation.” Right before the slides shuffle you’ll be asked if you want to include the title slide in the shuffle or leave it at the beginning of the presentation. You can always undo the shuffling of your presentation by reverting to the previous version in the “version history” menu found in the “File” drop-down menu.
Unsplash Photos for Google Slides
Unsplash Photos Google Slides add-on gives you instant access to Unsplash’s collection of free, royalty-free photographs. In the following video I demonstrate how to add the Add-on to your Google Slides, how to use Unsplash Photos, and I explain the licensing of Unsplash Photos.
Easy Accents
This add-on appeared in my list of recommended Google Docs add-ons. I recommend the Google Slides version of it too. Easy Accents for Google Slides is easy to use. When you have it installed you can launch it on any slide. Type as you normally would until you need to add an accent mark that isn’t easy to create on your keyboard. Then just insert the letter and accent mark that you need from the Easy Accents keyboard. After inserting the letter and accent mark you can go back to typing on your physical keyboard. Easy Accents for Google Slides currently supports more than twenty languages.
