How I turned a PowerPoint course into an interactive web course, with AI

An honest behind-the-scenes look at taking a finished slide deck and, with AI, publishing it as an interactive web course — one screen at a time. The steps I took, and the mistakes I made along the way.

Applied AI PowerPoint → Web Behind the scenes

See the course arrow_forward

This is a preview: modules 1 and 2 are open to explore, the rest are coming soon.

Watch the walkthrough

The question

I have been teaching online since around 2018, and in person since about 2017, so I have a pile of old PowerPoint decks from those courses. This one is from roughly 2018, updated around 2020 — somewhere between 300 and 370 slides, many of them with no text at all, just images, and a look that has aged. The question I wanted to answer: can AI take a finished PowerPoint and turn it into a course that is actually ready to be consumed?

This was a real experiment to show AI applied to education for real, instead of just talking about it. The AWS team has invited me to share a bit of how I use these tools — they gave me access to Kiro and everything. So I ran the experiment and documented the steps, mistakes included.

1Extract the images and the PDF from the deck

The deck has over 300 slides, and Google Drive only lets you download images one at a time — clicking each one is impractical at that scale. So I asked the AI (Kiro) to generate a Google Apps Script that exports every slide as an image. It took three versions, because Apps Script has an execution limit of about 6 minutes, so the export had to be batched.

I ran it from the deck (Extensions → Apps Script), it saved every slide as an image to a folder, and I also saved the PPT as PDF. Then I downloaded the folder and the PDFs into the project's sources/ folder, so the AI had access to everything.

Tip: ask the AI tool what it is capable of first. Kiro can read a PPT, but slowly — it needs external libraries. PDF and images it reads more directly, which is why converting everything up front helped.

Two things to get it running: the Apps Script works in batches, so sometimes you have to run it again — it picks up where it stopped. And in the left sidebar, under Services, add the Google Slides API so it runs properly.

2Extract all the content into a Markdown file

I pointed the AI at the folders and it extracted all of the content into a structured Markdown file — in about 10 minutes.

I did not review the extracted content, and that was a mistake. I already knew some of it would not extract well — for example, a chart with no textual explanation, and the AI did not connect a chart in one PPT to a related chart in another. I could have told the AI up front what it was allowed to touch and what resources it had. The lesson: review the extraction, and give the AI more context and permissions from the start. Since it was a lot of material, I chose to review the final content instead — I figured that would be easier for this test.

3Create the content's design system

I asked for a look of my own — explicitly not the generic feel of "vibe coding". I wanted SCORM-like e-learning features without actually using SCORM: keyboard-controlled navigation, the screen auto-scrolling down, interactive activities and example-driven interactions. I also asked the AI to create characters with their own personalities, to illustrate and build little stories. This part took a while — the design system is a real artifact.

You can explore it yourself: it opens in a window right here on the page.

4Build the interactive screens (the course)

The AI built module 1 first, so I could test it. I iterated and fixed a lot on that first module before the pattern was right — then the rest followed from it. It is plain HTML and JavaScript, no framework, adapted for mobile. I published it on my site. This process took a lot of review: adapting for mobile, fixing animations, inserting new slides. The AI kept trying to simplify too much, to the point of removing content. I had to be explicit about what to include and exclude — and that is tied back to step 2, the content extraction. But this is a process everyone has to go through, unless you have extensive notes or a script for each course (something I will have for my next test).

Modules 3 and up are not public yet, because I have not reviewed them. Modules 1 and 2 are open to explore.

See the course arrow_forward

A new way to use AI

This is a new way to use AI: converting PowerPoint decks into interactive, e-learning-style courses that are also mobile-friendly. It was fast, it did not cost many tokens, and the design came out genuinely unique — not the generic look of vibe coding. Next, I want to redo my Emotional Intelligence course in a far more playful, gamified way. This was a first test, and it went well.

Course by Ivan Chagas.

Explore the course arrow_forward

What this means for your company

This process — take finished material you already own and, with AI, turn it into an interactive, mobile-friendly course — isn't exclusive to a personal PowerPoint. It's a pattern you can borrow: stop letting good content sit frozen in slides and reshape it into something people actually go through. Here's how it travels to other contexts.

Corporate

Turn the pile of training decks T&D already has — onboarding, compliance, product — into interactive web courses employees actually finish, without hiring an e-learning studio for each one.

Inside a team

Take the slides from an internal workshop or a lunch-and-learn and turn them into a self-paced interactive module, so knowledge that lived in one presenter's head becomes something the whole team can go through anytime.

Educators & creators

A teacher or creator rescues years of old decks and republishes them as interactive courses with their own identity — reaching students on the web and on mobile instead of a PDF nobody opens.

The takeaway: wherever good content is stuck in a static format, reshaping it with AI into something interactive beats leaving it to gather dust. That's the piece worth adapting to your context.

Extraction script Google Apps Script · .gs

Open your deck in Google Slides, go to Extensions → Apps Script, paste this, and run exportarSlidesComoImagens. It saves every slide as a PNG to a Drive folder, in batches (click Run again until it says PRONTO!).

/**
 * Exports every slide as a PNG to a Drive folder, in manual BATCHES.
 * No triggers: each click on "Run" processes one batch and stops.
 * Resumes where it left off: just click again until it prints "DONE!".
 *
 * To start over from scratch: run "resetarExportacao".
 */

var TAMANHO_LOTE = 60;        // slides per run
var SEGUNDOS_LIMITE = 320;    // stops before the 6-minute cutoff

function exportarSlidesComoImagens() {
  var inicio = new Date().getTime();
  var props = PropertiesService.getScriptProperties();

  var presentation = SlidesApp.getActivePresentation();
  var presentationId = presentation.getId();
  var slides = presentation.getSlides();
  var total = slides.length;

  var proximo = parseInt(props.getProperty('proximo') || '0', 10);
  var pastaId = props.getProperty('pastaId');

  var pasta;
  if (pastaId) {
    pasta = DriveApp.getFolderById(pastaId);
  } else {
    var nomePasta = presentation.getName() + ' - PNGs (' +
      Utilities.formatDate(new Date(), Session.getScriptTimeZone(), 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm') + ')';
    pasta = DriveApp.createFolder(nomePasta);
    props.setProperty('pastaId', pasta.getId());
    Logger.log('Folder created: ' + pasta.getUrl());
  }

  var larguraDigitos = String(total).length;
  var token = ScriptApp.getOAuthToken();
  var processadosNoLote = 0;

  for (var i = proximo; i < total; i++) {
    var decorrido = (new Date().getTime() - inicio) / 1000;
    if (processadosNoLote >= TAMANHO_LOTE || decorrido >= SEGUNDOS_LIMITE) {
      props.setProperty('proximo', String(i));
      Logger.log('>>> Batch complete. Stopped at slide ' + i + ' of ' + total +
        '. CLICK RUN AGAIN to continue. <<<');
      return;
    }

    var slideId = slides[i].getObjectId();
    var url = 'https://slides.googleapis.com/v1/presentations/' + presentationId +
      '/pages/' + slideId + '/thumbnail' +
      '?thumbnailProperties.mimeType=PNG' +
      '&thumbnailProperties.thumbnailSize=LARGE';

    var resposta = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url, {
      headers: { Authorization: 'Bearer ' + token },
      muteHttpExceptions: true
    });

    if (resposta.getResponseCode() !== 200) {
      Logger.log('Error on slide ' + (i + 1) + ': ' + resposta.getContentText());
      continue;
    }

    var contentUrl = JSON.parse(resposta.getContentText()).contentUrl;
    var imagem = UrlFetchApp.fetch(contentUrl).getBlob();

    var numero = ('0'.repeat(larguraDigitos) + (i + 1)).slice(-larguraDigitos);
    imagem.setName('slide-' + numero + '.png');
    pasta.createFile(imagem);

    props.setProperty('proximo', String(i + 1));
    processadosNoLote++;
    Logger.log('Exported slide ' + (i + 1) + ' of ' + total);
    Utilities.sleep(200);
  }

  props.deleteProperty('proximo');
  Logger.log('DONE! All ' + total + ' slides exported. Folder: ' + pasta.getUrl());
}

/** Resets progress to start over from slide 1 (does not delete the old folder). */
function resetarExportacao() {
  var props = PropertiesService.getScriptProperties();
  props.deleteProperty('proximo');
  props.deleteProperty('pastaId');
  Logger.log('Progress reset. Run "exportarSlidesComoImagens" to start from scratch.');
}