When it comes to giving presentations in a company there are few main pieces of software in use today.

Microsoft’s PowerPoint

This is the king of all presentation software. However, it comes at a steep price. You need to pay for a monthly subscription for Office 365 or pay a large lump sum of cash for the yearly edition.

The main benefit is that it just works. Almost every file you throw at it runs correctly, so you never have to worry about having issues in the middle of your presentation. Most large companies lean towards using this stable software.

It also has amazing dual monitor support to allow the host to have more control over the situation.

Google Docs‘ Slides

This is completely free. Making it extremely tempting for schools. I find that most K-12 schools in America, Japan, and through-out the world use Google Docs due to lack of budget to pay for something better. Since it is “free”, having a few issues here and there is not that big of a deal.

Slides has a difficult time reading Microsoft’s PowerPoint files. Especially if they are complex.

LibreOffice’s & OpenOffice’s Impress

These two are practically the same software but split into two different companies due to some extremely complex reasons. Their main benefit is that they are open source and free. Impress is a very capable software, but it doesn’t play well with Google nor Microsoft presentation documents.

If you are willing to make everything in Impress and not share between users of other software brands, then it is totally worth it. Personally, this is the one I use for making presentations (LibreOffice). I am a huge fan of opensource software. I like the feeling of community and the ability to become a part of the development and future of the software–which I rarely do.

HOWEVER…..

I rarely use any of these presentation applications for one main reason; they require you to prepare everything in advance.

Teaching English is not something you can completely predict what will be necessary for the lesson. Even if I teach the same topic to multiple classes, each class has unique questions and flows to them. This forces me to change my lesson quite a lot from class to class. I never know what will be asked of me or what topic I might have to expand on. Making it impossible to create a presentation that will perfectly work for the class.

So instead I am forced to improvise a large portion of my lessons. I have created a few original software to help with getting information on the screen quickly, but the best presentation software for improvising, editing, and changing on the fly is ….

OpenBoard

It is the best of both worlds. It has dual screen support. You can prepare presentations in advance. You can take screenshots of your screen or parts of your screen. Use a highlighter. Add text on the fly. It is the perfect software for people who need to give a presentation that is constantly changing and flowing in new directions.

I highly recommend it.