Google Slides - Built in Back Channel!

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One of the new features to be released last week for Google Slides is pretty slick for now having an interactive presentation!  It is the new Audience Q&A feature.  Basically you can have a backchannel for any of your Google Slides presentations.  Here's how it works:

First create your presentation.  Once it is created you you are ready to present click on the little arrow immediately to the right to the Present icon - this will give you the option of Presenter view.  Select Presenter view:

You will get a window where you can now either see your speaker notes OR now view audience questions in a new Audience Tools tab!  To use the Audience Q&A, you'll first click on the Start Now button:

Once enabled, you will have a link for the presentation, and a toggle to turn the feature on/off:
 One note about the link - if you close the window on your presentation, and then reopen it you get a NEW url.  So, for instance, if you are a teacher and want to share the link prior to the presentation in an email to your students, if you go snag the link you MUST leave your presentation "playing" or it invalidates the link.  There are pros and cons to this - one obvious pro is that it is a quick reset, and one obvious con is that you cannot easily share the link in advance.

The link also appears at the top of your slides that are displaying for your audience:
Anyone with the link can then ask a question - they DO have to be logged into a Google account, but not necessarily their GAFE account if you are a Google Apps School.  In my example, here I am logged into my personal Google Account on my cell phone.  I simply type the question (1) and click on Submit (2):
Once there has been a question asked, it will display for anyone that has connected to the URL you provided.  Anyone else can then "thumb up" or "thumb down" a question:
As the presenter, these questions display along with the author, time of submission and importance by the rest of the audience (by the thumbs):
If you want to display one of the questions to your audience, simply click on the Present (1) below the question.  To stop displaying it, click on the Hide (2):
When you are presenting it, it displays like a new slide:
If you wish to toggle the Q&A off, if a person is still connected via the link you provided they get a message telling them the Q&A session is closed:
I think this is a great new feature that I cannot wait to incorporate into my presentations!

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