When teaching online, you may want to use a handout that you would typically give each student as a hard-copy. Google Slides is known for creating compelling presentations, but it can also create interactive documents. By saving the image as a background to the slide master, it is more difficult for students to move or delete the image on the slide. You can easily share the digital worksheet/workbook in Google Classroom as “make a copy for each student.” Let’s get started!
- First, save the handout as an IMAGE on your computer. If it is a PDF, you will need to take a SCREENSHOT of the file. By doing so, it will convert the PDF to an image file and save it to your desktop.
- Open a BLANK Google Slides presentation. NAME the file.
- Next, we will add the image to the background. From the MENU bar, click on SLIDE ⇒ EDIT MASTER
- From the EDIT MASTER screen, scroll down to the last layout. This layout is blank.
- To add the slide layout that contains the image, click on the NEW SLIDE arrow from the toolbar. Select the slide.
- The slide with the background image now appears. You may want to add text boxes on the slide or create labels and instructions on the slide border. To accomplish this, use the toolbar options.

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