My Mother Always Taught Me To Share Slides (A slidespace for PowerPoints!)

Every semester I give a presentation with two other teachers on team teaching to student teachers at a local college, Heidelberg University. Part of the presentation consists of a PowerPoint that we created several years ago for a presentation at the Ohio Middle School Association conference. The room we present in has a desktop computer with Internet access that is connected to a projector and an interactive whiteboard. The computer does not, however, have a floppy drive or USB ports. This always causes problems because I have to come up with a way to transfer the PowerPoint from the computer in my school to the computer at the college (I can't use a floppy or my thumbdrive!). In the past I have always uploaded the file to a website that I maintain for school and then downloaded it at Heidelberg.

I recently came across a web 2.0 site that makes it much easier to share PowerPoints. Slideshare.net allows members to create a slideplace where they can host and share presentations for free. Users of the site can view the presentation within their browser so there is no need to have PowerPoint installed on their computer. If they have PowerPoint, they can also download the file. Setting up a slidespace was very easy and it didn’t take long to upload my PowerPoint. To view the team teaching PowerPoint, click here.

Here are three file storage/sharing sites that look promising (I haven't used them yet):

• yousendit.com: Allows members to upload files (up to 100 mb for free) and then sends an email with the download URL to your recipient.
• 4shared.com: Gives members up to 1gb of free space to upload files.
• mediamax.com: Provides 25 gb of free space. Uploads are limited to 10 mb at a time.

If you have a storage/sharing site that you like, please comment and share with the rest of us!