Why not?

slideshare-logo.gif  I was taking a second look at SlideShare this morning, which if you haven’t seen it, is like a professional’s “YouTube” for uploading powerpoint presentations. 

They are doing some creative things there, like holding a “world’s best presentation” contest, and letting users vote.  (An aside– I  noticed a version of Karl Fisch’s and Scott McLeod’s presentation, Did You Know, is entered in the competition with new graphics from J Brenman.)

I was thinking about a post Joel Adkins (our campus technology coordinator) wrote recently, entitled TechTube.  He was asking why educators keep reinventing the wheel, particular on training, and if there couldn’t be a site for teachers and trainers where they could upload their training materials or teaching materials to share with others.

So, this is a shout out for educators to use SlideShare.  Why couldn’t we being using it as a place to upload presentations we do for students or for training purposes?  If we give them some common subject “tags” then we could easily find the materials. 

Or better yet, like the new Teacher Tube for videos, why can’t there be a Slide Share  for Teachers that is user friendly?   And better yet, why can’t there be one for students?

Imagine how the design quality of student presentations might improve if students could upload their presentations for a “world’s best” competition?  (Ok, I know there are a million issues with plagiarism here….)  But how about doing this within a class or within a campus?  You could feature the “year’s best” student powerpoints or class presentations.

What do you think about either idea?

3 thoughts on “Why not?

  1. Carolyn,

    I found your post on my RSS feed and just wanted to say a quick hello from SlideShare. We are very interested in what teachers have to say and what they want from sites like ours. Tell us on this thread or email me (rashmi AT slideshare DOT NET.

    And I love the idea of contests within schools / univs etc. I will mention that within the team.

    rashmi
    the slideshare team

  2. The ideal would be a separate SlideShare area for educators, perhaps sorted by elementary, secondary, college level or areas for students? Or a set of suggested common tags for educators? Barring that, it could grow organically as teachers discover it.

    The interface seems easy enough but currently it appears the site is used more by enterprise or university level users?

    I could see Slideshare being of tremendous use for teachers and technology trainers for sharing materials or finding materials to use.   Or as I said, SlideShare Teachers would be even greater! I’m not sure if educators are your target clientele, but maybe more publicity in the “school” environment would be helpful if you were interested in that.

  3. I think the idea of “Slideshare” is wonderful. Synergy, I think, best describes the ideal of sharing ideas and building upon them in a community of teachers and educators.

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