This afternoon, Susan Davis and I were putting the finishing touches on a presentation for the Association of Independent Maryland Schools Technology Retreat. We had been collaborating using a Google Docs Presentation and had planned on downloading the finished presentation to a PowerPoint, because once can never be certain of Internet connectivity at a conference.
While trying to open up the presenter's notes feature we stumbled upon the fact that the presentation software in Google Apps has a feature that allows viewers of a presentation to have backchannel discussions automatically displayed while the presentation is flowing. What a wonderful concept! To access this feature, you click on "View together" after you click on "Start Presentation".
Playing with this feature for a few minutes, we discovered that while a presentation is being displayed, a backchannel can be viewed to the right. I love it!
However, this feature also seems to allow any participant to take control of the presentation and see the presenter's notes. Uh-oh, that could be dangerous.
So, from our quick test, we believe that this feature will be great when working in a small, trusted environment. I look forward to playing with this feature more.
If you have any experience working with this feature, please share your experiences.
