As a teacher I use quite a few presentations. For the past few years I’ve used Google Slides because of the easy to use cloud storage and simplicity.

Just started a new school and, thanks to a draconian ICT policy, Google Slides is a no go. As I use Android and Linux at home I don’t really want to resort to PowerPoint and an encrypted USB drive (which seems to be the default position for other staff).

Have just found Microsoft Sway, which unusually for big M stuff I really like, but it currently doesn’t have great organisational features for your files, nor the ability to export/save your presentations locally.

So, there any other cool presentation tools out there that I don’t know about? My needs…

Browser-based (or at the very least, able to run from a USB).
Ideally with a decent cloud storage/account facility.
Simple and quick to use (drag n drop, but don’t need masses of features like transitions and animations).

Aware of Prezi and used it in its early days, but was fiddly to use and now subscription only.

Would love to use Evernote’s presentation mode, but can’t install the standalone app and the web client doesn’t yet have that feature…

Any ideas?

Waste of a post…

How so? No other options besides those I already know about? Or just suck it up and really on the perils of USB storage (whose encryption won’t play with my Linux stuff at home)?

Office 365. You can use PowerPoint online that way and save to MS onedrive. All in your browser

https://office.live.com/start/PowerPoint.aspx

Are you sure that other web based options won’t fall foul of the ICT policy?
If google slides is out, I suspect any other non-secure web SAS type services will be too.

Office 365 I have, but Onedrive is not enabled (told you it was draconian). Currently in conversation with ICT about enabling it…

Certainly possible other cloud storage might not work (Dropbox certainly doesn’t), but the storage built into Sway works OK.

‘works’ or is allowed?
different things – be careful.

colournoise – Member
How so?

Sorry! I meant *I* wasted a post
Hadn’t read your OP thoroughly and mine was just unhelpful.

I’d talk to IT and tell them you don’t have the tools to do your job. If they can’t facilitate your ability to give presentations, you can’t give presentations.

If their answer is “PowerPoint” and you’re expected to work from home, then a) they should be providing the kit to do so, and b) get learning PowerPoint, Buttercup.

geoffj – Member
‘works’ or is allowed?
different things – be careful.

‘Is allowed’ from their point of view, ‘works’ (for me) from mine.

Cougar – tried that argument, it was ignored… I know Occam’s Razor says PowerPoint (don’t need to learn it, just don’t like it that much), local storage and USB, but that feels like going backwards 5 or 6 years to me…

Fair enough. Point is though, you can do what you need to or you can’t, and if you can’t then they need to be providing. It’s not down to you to find workarounds (which might get you in trouble for circumventing security).

Stop making hard work of it and use Powerpoint on a USB stick.

^ I agree.

Presentations are most of my work. The software won’t change the message…so rely on your content.

As you know, the slides are only ever there because people expect them.

You can export google slides to powerpoint
or publish toe google slides to web and just browse to them
or can you bring in your own device and connect to the screen
Usually you can boot into Linux from a live USB too 😉

Currently in conversation with ICT about enabling it…

Might be a bt tl;dr, raw nerve hit 🙂

Carry on talking, the reality of one man’s Draconian IT is often an ICT Manager’s nightmare with **** staff who think they know better becasue they can download and install Ubuntu and are therefore an expert in IT security, enterprise software and turining up at 9am on Monday saying the’ve just lost a load of business critcal data as their personal cloud storage was only storage and had no backup, also due to being stored in personal cloud storage the data has never sniffed company storage so there is zero backup history and their laptop has now screwed up all on it’s own, honest guv and fix it now because I have a meeting with the boss and I’ll say IT are rubbish if you don’t. <…and take a breath>

IT Managers response should be to give the boss the broken laptop and an analysis of what the employee has done that means they should be terminated immediately for deiberatey abusing provided company materials. Sadly most of the time we bail your sorry arse out of the crap and just put up with you bitching about the Draconian IT. Let me guess you’ve probably referred to the ICT Manager as Field Marshall before now?

Lomg winded way of saying, supported yor type before, it’s horrible but we smile at you and carry on. It wouldn’t be so horrible if you just took five minutes to talk to us and let us help you do your job.

Powerpoint and encryted USB seems a perfectly sensible way forward for me – it does work, regardless of corporate preferences, Powerpoint got to where it did by doing the job. If that’s what the school wants you to do then suck it up princess, remember who you work for and learn to use Powerpoint.

Powerpoint and encryted USB seems a perfectly sensible way forward for me – it does work, regardless of corporate preferences, Powerpoint got to where it did by doing the job. If that’s what the school wants you to do then suck it up princess, remember who you work for and learn to use Powerpoint.

The idea of carrying around all of your work on a USB stick because somebody can’t work out how to use shared storage or any number of useful products is a bit backwards. USB was always the last resort.

turining up at 9am on Monday saying the’ve just lost a load of business critcal data as their personal cloud storage was only storage and had no backup,

so about the same as turning up at 9am and crying as you lost your usb stick with all your work on it that wasn’t backed up cause it was on the stick?

Lomg winded way of saying, supported yor type before, it’s horrible but we smile at you and carry on. It wouldn’t be so horrible if you just took five minutes to talk to us and let us help you do your job.

Powerpoint and encryted USB seems a perfectly sensible way forward for me – it does work, regardless of corporate preferences, Powerpoint got to where it did by doing the job. If that’s what the school wants you to do then suck it up princess, remember who you work for and learn to use Powerpoint.

Do you by any chance work for Serco?

The idea of carrying around all of your work on a USB stick because somebody can’t work out how to use shared storage or any number of useful products is a bit megabyte backwards.

FIFY

The idea of carrying around all of your work on a USB stick because somebody can’t work out how to use shared storage or any number of useful products is a bit backwards. USB was always the last resort.

OP is in a school and therefore subject to some pretty stringent legal standards around data security.

Use of cloud storage will be banned because unless you really know what you’re doing you’re unlikely to be able to guarantee where the data is physically stored. If he let pupil data be stored in the US for example, he’d be in doo-doo (Safe Harbour no longer exists)

An encrypted USB drive is a perfectly valid solution to this. Yes, it may get lost, but that’s why it’s encrypted.

Equally, I’d be surprised if strictly speaking policy let teachers take the data home with them and put it on their own machines. I appreciate the ‘provision of tools’ argument, but the data must be kept secure, and as Allan23 pointed out, most people haven’t a scooby.

Don’t any of these places have networks and file servers?

Lomg winded way of saying, supported yor type before

And I’ve worked with your type before, self-important IT managers who think they run the place and can dictate what’s what rather than giving people the resources they need in a controlled and secure manner. (No offence, I’ve done the same myself in a past life.)

Have fallen into the lost USB trap before (and yes, I had backed up).

No sensitive data involved (not even student first names) – just lesson content and resources.

For further context, I’ve been advised this is a trust-wide decision but my wife works at another school in the trust and checked for me this morning – she has full access to Google Drive.

Not even going to contemplate running Linux from a USB – that’s me out of a job (and presumably wouldn’t fix the issue as the filter is server-side?).

So, regardless of all the IT bluster, are there any other presentation tools out there I could look at?

Lomg winded way of saying, supported yor type before, it’s horrible but we smile at you and carry on. It wouldn’t be so horrible if you just took five minutes to talk to us and let us help you do your job.

Hmmmnnn. Shoe on the other foot. I’m fairly IT savvy (in my last couple of schools I’ve always been one of the staff who the IT teams seek out to trial new tools and their application, so probably not ‘horrible’ to work with in this context), am well aware of the security implications (as a pastoral manager in the past I’ve had to be) and have worked with quite a number of school IT support teams who have no idea about how tech can really support teachers and students if applied in the right way.

Is there going to be any personal data in the presentations?
My assumption is that there shouldn’t be – and the security policy needs to reflect this.
We don’t like encrypted USB disks because of the pain and wrist slapping involved when you have to report them when they do get lost – not because of any real risk of losing data.
There are secure DPA compliant cloud-based storage options out there (e.g. Egress), but they tend to be expensive.

My approach to this would be:
1. Affirm that none of your presentations contain any personal data; and
2. Use your preferred presentation authoring tool and then publish to something like Slidely and then give the presentation as if simply viewing a web page.

Point 1 is the important one though – don’t take personal data home or use on your own devices.

Edit – doesn’t even need to be slidely, depending on transitions / animations 🙄 just show the slides as a series of images from flickr etc.

And I’ve worked with your type before, self-important IT managers who think they run the place and can dictate what’s what rather than giving people the resources they need in a controlled and secure manner. (No offence, I’ve done the same myself in a past life.)

None taken 🙂 As it happens I agree with you about IT working with the business rather than dictating – IT people need reminding who they work for too.

Been fortunate to mostly work in places where a lot of effort goes into setting up an environment that is secure and works to the benefit of the businesses, sometimes we’ve had HR backing and they have gone to town on people who have gone out of their way to bypass systems. Other companies have been less strict and it’s frustrating.

Hmmmnnn. Shoe on the other foot. I’m fairly IT savvy (in my last couple of schools I’ve always been one of the staff who the IT teams seek out to trial new tools and their application, so probably not ‘horrible’ to work with in this context), am well aware of the security implications (as a pastoral manager in the past I’ve had to be) and have worked with quite a number of school IT support teams who have no idea about how tech can really support teachers and students if applied in the right way.

Sorry if it seemed blunt but I have heard the tech savvy thing too many times just before something has gone horrifically wrong and there’s been a data breach or something similar.

I’m quite savvy at teaching people how to use our software, I don’t presume I could do your job… ever. Teachers I’ve known are all some kind of special insane and I’d be terrified even attempting their job.
Give me difficult customers and users breaking stuff it took ages to setup anyday.

I admit there can be bad IT departments, as Cougar suggests, but by bypassing systems it puts you firmly in the line of fire when something goes wrong.

I would suggest if there is a service improvemnt scheme to get involved, if it’s outsourced IT find out who manages it, if it’s internal or council based, find out who didn’t duck fast enough to avoid managing it.

In the meantime just follow the process.

To tie up loose ends. This is resolved, though not in any way the IT bods here might approve of.

Turns out that while the front end of Drive is blocked the actual content is not currently, so all my resources can be accessed through the legacy Google Docs interface. Not as slick, but perfectly usable. Although the data is quite clearly stored on the same non-EU server, I’m taking the view that while I can access it without gaming the system then I’m not stepping over any policy lines.

Discovered I can also run Evernote from an encrypted USB (which as far as i can tell from a thorough rereading of the fair use policy is not prohibited), so I have that option too.

Preparing my STW flame retardant suit…