Anyone that has to create presentations on a regular basis knows that keeping your audience’s attention while presenting the information is critical.

There are a number of great presentation platforms, but one that you’ve probably never heard of has an interesting twist…audience participation.

SlideIdea takes a completely different approach because it’s an iPad app associated with a custom website.

This free app makes creating presentations from its tap and drag templates quick and easy just like all the rest but the audience engagement component is what really peaked my interest.

You can poll your audience with the voting widget that’s built into the platform, field questions via the messaging tool and use whiteboard tools to make annotations in real time.

Audience members simply go to a special url to engage with the presentation that they’re seeing, so it’s a cool trick to keep them involved.

It’s an especially interesting platform if you’re an educator.