New Features in Google Slides - Live Q&A and laser pointer

Google announced last week that it was sprucing up its features with Live Question and Answer and laser pointer functionality now added to Google Slides - is Slides now becoming a presentation heavyweight force to be reckoned with?

With Poll Everywhere functionality already available (although an account is required) and now the ability for Presenters to launch a Q&A link during a presentation, it is becoming an all-in-one presentation solution.

The Q&A feature enables the audience to submit questions anonymously or with their name attached, and then lets the other people in the audience "vote" for the questions they like the most, so the presenter gets a list of questions in order of popularity, enabling them to tackle the burning issues first. The presenter gets a notification when a question comes in, so they can choose to answer it there and then, or wait until the end. They can also share the question on the presentation screen.

Submit your questions either with your name or anonymously during a presentation. Photo - Google

Also featured in the update was a laser pointer that presenters can use their mouse to point to different aspects on the screen.

To launch a Q&A session from the Desktop App

1. Open Google Slides 
2. Open the presentation 
3. Click on the down arrow next to present
4. Select Present view
5. Start New
6. You Slides contain the link to the Q&A page for the audience 

To launch a Q&A session from the Mobile App

1. Open Google Slides App
2. Open the presentation 
3. Click on the Play icon
4. Select Present to a new video call
5. Give your meeting a name
6. Click present
7. You then get a view that shows you your current and next slides, along with your notes. Click on the icon at the top of the screen to launch the Q&A Session
8. You get a short goo.gl link to share with the audience for them to contribute their questions to