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According to TechRadar's article "50 Websites You'll Wonder How You Lived Without," Slideshare.net was created when "Jonathan Boutelle was at a conference and saw how attendees were easily sharing large videos and photo collections online, but had to physically pass around USB keys to distribute sales presentations. He created SlideShare as a way to host and store PowerPoint files." Since then, Slideshare "has became incredibly popular," hosting thousands and thousands of presentations for free. Slideshare has a dual purpose -- on one hand, it is a great way for you to share presentations you have created. Simply upload a presentation to Slideshare (where others may access it) and then embed the code in a blog, wiki, or website your viewers can access. On the other hand, Slideshare is also a great place to get content and design ideas for presentations.

Similarily, Scribd is an easy way to publish and share documents online. Scribd's Help Section says it best:

"Scribd is a free web-based, document sharing community and self-publishing platform that enables anyone to easily publish, distribute, share, and discover documents of all kinds. E-books, presentations, essays, academic papers, newsletters, photo albums, school work, and sheet music are just a few of the different kinds of documents you can publish and share on Scribd.
 

Scribd is full of cool and interesting features that will transform how you work with documents on the web!

• Upload documents in many different formats, including Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, plain text, HTML, PowerPoint, Excel, OpenOffice, JPEG, and more!
• Embed your documents in a blog, Facebook profile, or other external website with your fonts, images, and formatting fully intact
• Host a document at Scribd with its own unique URL
• Unlimited storage - upload as many documents as you like
• Your choice of one of four uploaders that best suits your needs
• Fast indexing by Google and other major search engines will ensure that your content is easily found by just about everyone!
• Keep certain documents private or share with a limited number of friends
• Automatically convert published content into PDF, Word, and plain text
• Analyze your viewers by location, Google referral, and more
• Find documents similar to yours
• Receive feedback and comments from Scribd's community
• Retain full document copyright or make your documents available under Creative Commons licenses
• Create a profile and make new friends and fans
• Explore the hundreds of thousands of documents that have already been uploaded by Scribd's community - browse by category and tags, use our full-text search tool, or just browse by what's popular - it's up to you!"

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Check out SlideShare:

• On the homepage, click on "Latest," "Most Viewed," "Most Embedded," "Most Favorited," and "Most Downloaded" to get an idea for what is available. While doing so, take note of some of the well-designed presentations; you may want to use these as examples for students of what good PowerPoint presentations look like.

• Click on "Browse" (next to "Home") and then click on "Education" or another category that interests you. Again, note good content and/or design.

• Sign up for a free account and upload a PowerPoint presentation. It is pretty simple, but be sure to check out the FAQs in advance or if you have a problem.

• Use the code Slideshare generates to embed your presentation into a blog, wiki, or webpage. Check out "How do I embed a slideshow into my blog or website" in the FAQs if you are having any problems.

Check out Scribd:

• As with all web 2.0 tools, it is a good idea to check out the FAQs in order to get a feel for what the tool offers.

• "Explore" the documents on Scribd and note that you can sort them by "Hottest," Most Viewed," Most Liked," Most Discussed," Most Favorited," and "Most Recent." Additionally, you can sort most of the previous categories by "Today," "This Week," "This Month," or "All Time" as well as by language, length, or filetype.

• Click on "Community" (next to "Home," "Explore," and "Upload") and scroll down to "Browse Groups."  Notice anything familiar? As of this moment, the page contains documents from the CDC, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the World Library, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and more.
• Is there a paper or electronic document you have been wishing you could easily share online? Now is your chance. Sign up for a free account, upload your document, and then post it to your blog, wiki, or webpage. If you have questions, visit the FAQs.

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• Blog about your experience with either or both tools.