One of my favorite blogs Lifehacker covered slideshare the other day. Now while slideshare is in Beta, this could turn into a tremendous web application for academics. With Slideshare you can load a slide show (think powerpoint, open office, or just a collection of images) easily onto the web and make them available for others to see. Slideshare even lets you link to them through your own website to have the presentation appear on yours. Think of slideshare as YouTube for presentations. The uses for this seem pretty broad and really sweet! Every lecture you give that has a slide component can be made easily (and freely) viewable by students. What is more you can embed the show in your own blog or course page, without worrying about formating or bandwidth issues. Or, after you give an academic presentation, load of the slides on Slideshow and then you don’t have to worry about emailing your powerpoint to everyone who asks. Or, before your presentation, load the slides onto the web and that way if you have issues with the powerpoint, don’t know the specifications of the computer to which you will have access, no worries, all you need is a web browser . .Super Useful!
I started using Slide Share a couple of weeks ago and I have noticed that the amount of times my students have reviewed the slides has increased. It is great because they don’t have to download the Power Point, or even have Power Point or viewer software installed. I have my students record their voices saying our vocabulary words and definitions (which they really enjoy). The only drawback I’ve seen to Slide Share is being able to access that kind of content or links within the presentation.