Interactive Google Slides Presentation | How to Set Up with AhaSlides in 3 Steps

Tired of watching your audience's eyes glaze over during presentations?

Let's face it:

Keeping people engaged is TOUGH. Whether you're presenting in a stuffy conference room or on Zoom, those blank stares are every presenter's nightmare.

Sure, Google Slides works. But basic slides aren't enough anymore. That's where AhaSlides comes in.

AhaSlides lets you transform boring presentations into interactive experiences with live polls, quizzes, and Q&As that actually get people involved.

And you know what? You can set this up in just 3 simple steps. And yes, it's free to try!

Today you're going to learn how to make an interactive presentation in Google Slides. Let's dive in...

Table of Contents

Creating Interactive Google Slides Presentation in 3 Simple Steps

Let's take a look at the 3 easy steps for bringing your interactive Google Slides presentation to AhaSlides. We'll talk you through how to import, how to personalise, and how to increase the interactivity of your presentation.

Be sure to click on the images and GIFs for a zoomed-in version.

Step #1 | Copying Google Slides Presentation to AhaSlides

1. On your Google Slides presentation, click on 'File'.
2. Then, click on 'Publish to the web'.
3. Under the 'Link' tab, click on 'Publish (don't worry about the checkboxes as you can change your settings in AhaSlides later).
4. Copy the link.
5. Come to AhaSlides and create a Google Slides slide.
6. Paste the link into the box labelled 'Google Slides' Published link'.

Your presentation will be embedded into your slide. Now, you can set about making your Google Slides presentation interactive!

Step #2 | Personalising the Display Settings

Many of the presentation display settings on Google Slides are possible on AhaSlides. Let's take a look at what you can do to show your presentation off in its best light.

Full Screen and Laser Pointer

When presenting, choose the 'full screen' option on the toolbar at the bottom of the slide.

After that, select the laser pointer feature to give a more real-time feel to your presentation.

Auto-Advancing Slides

You can auto-advance your slides with the 'play' icon in the bottom left corner of your slide.

To change the speed at which the slides advance, click on the 'settings' icon, select 'Auto-advance (when played)' and choose the speed you want each slide to appear for.

Setting up Speaker Notes

If you want to set up speaker notes, be sure to do this before you publish your Google Slides presentation.

Write your speaker notes into the speaker note box of individual slides on Google Slides. Then, publish your presentation as laid out in step 1.

You can view your speaker notes on AhaSlides by going to your Google Slides slide, clicking on the 'settings' icon, and selecting 'Open speaker notes'.

If you want to keep these notes for yourself only, be sure to share only one window (the one containing your presentation) when presenting. Your speaker notes will come up in another window, meaning your audience won't be able to see them.

Step #3 | Making It Interactive

There are a few ways to maximise the impact of an interactive Google Slides presentation. By adding in AhaSlides' two-way technology, you can create dialogue via quizzes, polls and Q&As around the subject matter of your presentation.

Option #1: Make a Quiz

Quizzes are a fantastic way to test your audience's understanding of the subject matter. Putting one at the end of your presentation can really help to consolidate new knowledge in a fun and memorable way.

1. Create a new slide on AhaSlides after your Google Slides slide.

2. Select a type of quiz slide.

3. Fill out the content of the slide. This will be the question title, the options and right answer, the time to answer and the points system for answering.

4. Change the elements of the background. This includes text colour, base colour, background image and its visibility on the slide.

5. If you want to include more quiz slides before revealing the overall leaderboard, click on 'Remove leaderboard' in the 'Content' tab.

6. Create your other quiz slides and click 'Remove leaderboard' for all of them except for the final slide.

Option #2: Make a Poll

A poll in the middle of your interactive Google Slides presentation works wonders for creating a dialogue with your audience. It also helps to illustrate your point in a setting that directly involves your audience, leading to more engagement.

First, we'll show you how to create a poll:

1. Create a new slide either before or after your Google Slides slide. (Scroll down to find out how to put a poll in the middle of your Google Slides presentation).
2. Select the question type. A multiple-choice slide works well for a poll, as does an open-ended slide or a word cloud.

3. Pose your question, add the options and uncheck the box that states, 'This question has the correct answer(s)'

4. You can customise the background in the same way we explained in the 'make a quiz' option.

If you want to insert a quiz in the middle of your Google Slides presentation, you can do so in the following way:

1. Create a poll slide in the way we just mentioned and place it after your Google Slides slide.

2. Create a new Google Slides slide after your poll.

3. Paste the same published link of your Google Slides presentation in the box of this new Google Slides slide.

4. At the end of the published link, add the code: &slide= + the number of the slide you want to resume your presentation with. For example, if I want to resume my presentation on slide 15, I would write &slide=15 at the end of the published link.

This method is great for if you want to reach a certain slide in your Google Slides presentation, have a poll, then resume the rest of your presentation afterwards.

If you're looking for more help on how to make a poll on AhaSlides, check out our article and video tutorial here.

Option #3: Make a Q&A

A great feature of any interactive Google Slides presentation is the live Q&A. This function allows your audience to pose questions and even answer ones that you've posed to them.

Once you import your Google Slides presentation to AhaSlides, you won't be able to use Google Slides' in-built Q&A function. However, you can use AhaSlides' function just as easily!

1. Create a new slide before your Google Slides slide.

2. Select Q&A in the question type.

3. Choose whether or not to change the heading, whether to allow the audience to see each other's questions and whether to allow anonymous questions.

4. Make sure that the audience can send you questions on all slides.

Using the presentation code, your audience can pose you questions throughout your presentation. You can come back to these questions at any time, whether it's in the middle of your presentation or after it.

Here are a few features of the Q&A function on AhaSlides:

• Sort questions into categories in order to keep them organised. You can pin important questions to come back to later or you can mark questions as answered to keep track of what you've responded to.
• Upvoting questions allows other audience members to make the presenter aware that they would also like another person's question answered.
• Asking at any time means that the flow of the interactive presentation is never interrupted by questions. Only the presenter is in control of where and when to answer questions.

If you're after more tips on how to utilise Q&A for the ultimate interactive Google Slides presentation, check out our video tutorial here.

Why Create Your Interactive Google Slides Presentation to AhaSlides?

If you're in any doubt about why you would want to embed a Google Slides presentation into AhaSlides, let us give you 4 reasons.

#1. More Ways to Interact

While Google Slides has a nice Q&A feature, it lacks a lot of other features that foster interaction between the presenter and the audience.

If a presenter wants to gather information via a poll, for example, they would have to poll their audience before the presentation began. Then, they would have to quickly arrange that information into a self-made bar chart, all while their audience sits silently on Zoom. Far from ideal, for sure.

Well, AhaSlides lets you do this on the fly.

Simply pose a question on a multiple choice slide and wait for your audience to answer. Their results appear attractively and instantaneously in a bar, donut or pie chart for all to see.

You can also use a word cloud slide to gather opinions about a certain topic either before, during or after you present it. The most common words will appear larger and more centrally, giving you and your audience a good idea of everyone's viewpoints.

#2. Higher Engagement

One of the key ways that higher interaction benefits your presentation is in the rate of engagement.

Put simply, your audience pays much more attention when they're directly involved in the presentation. When they can voice their own opinions, ask their own questions and see their own data manifested in charts, they connect with your presentation on a more personal level.

Including audience data in your presentation is also a sublime way to help frame facts and figures in a more meaningful way. It helps the audience to see the bigger picture and gives them something to relate to.

#3. More Fun and Memorable Presentations

Fun plays a pivotal role in learning. We've known this for years, but it's not so easy to implement fun into lessons and presentations.

One study found that fun in the workplace is conducive to better and more daring ideas. Countless others have found a distinctive positive link between fun lessons and students' ability to remember facts within them.

AhaSlides' quiz function is so perfect for this. It's a simple tool that fosters fun and encourages competition within an audience, not to mention raising the engagement levels and providing an avenue for creativity.

Find out how to make the perfect quiz on AhaSlides with this tutorial.

#4. More Design Features

There are many ways that users of AhaSlides can benefit from Google Slides' premium features. The main one being that it's possible to personalise your slides on Google Slides before integrating your presentation with AhaSlides.

The great depth of font, image, colour and layout options on Google Slides can help bring an AhaSlides presentation to life. These features let you build your presentation in a style that connects your audience with your topic.

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Add a New Dimension to Your Interactive Google Slides?

Then try out AhaSlides for free.

Our free plan gives you full access to our interactive features, including the ability to import Google Slides presentations. Make them interactive with any of the methods we've discussed here, and start enjoying a more positive response to your presentations.

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