Welcome to episode 5 of Tech Tuesday! This week I’m focusing on tips and tricks in Google and will focus on a few tips in each of the different apps.
GOOGLE CHROME
Let’s start with Google Chrome. My first tip is about pinning tabs. This helps if you need to use a website often, like Google Drive. This will narrow the tab and move it to the left of the screen, taking up less room. Right-click on the tab and select Pin tab.
You can also see recently closed tabs. I use this one all the time because I’m a tab hoarder. I can frequently have 15 tabs open and accidentally close one or decide I want to go back to a tab I had open earlier. Click the 3 dots icon in the upper right corner of Chrome and select History. You could just go back and find the site in history, but it’s much easier to view and open recently closed tabs.
Another great tip is using separate Chrome profiles for each of your Google accounts. I have a personal Google and a work Google for school and I used to click on my profile picture and add an account, but I always ended up having documents go into the wrong drive or try to open a document shared with me and getting a denied access message, because it had tried to open in the wrong account. There is a MUCH better way to do this and Kasey Bell explains EVERYTHING you need to know about separating your accounts in this video.
It will absolutely save your sanity!!
My last tip for Chrome is about extensions. These are additional apps that extend the use of Chrome’s functionalities and allow you to do more. Go to chrome.google.com/webstore and search for relevant extensions such as Read and Write for Google Chrome. This is a tool that works for checking spelling, word prediction, reading text out loud, and my personal favorite, audio maker. Highlight a bit of text on a Google Doc or a website and then click this button. It will make an mp3 recording of the highlighted text! Instant read-aloud!
My only issue with this, however, is that it doesn’t work well with the quizzes in Canvas. Tressa Alter, one of our special education teachers, and I tested this out and the answer choices run together, not making it clear for students what the choices are. But overall, this is a great tool that I highly recommend and you’ll find a link to a guide to Read and Write’s tools, right here!
There’s also an extension for math called Equatio that will help you add math symbols and equations to most Google Apps like Slides or Sheets. Wakelet, another extension, is a new addition to my list and lets me bookmark sites and save them into specific collections. It reminds me a lot of Pinterest, but I don’t need to find an image to save resources.
In my school district, we already have quite a few extensions unblocked and you can view that list here. But if you find something you think is noteworthy for students to be able to use that isn’t unblocked, send an email to your ITRT or Patty Gilham to request it to be unblocked.
GOOGLE SLIDES
Google Slides is chock full of tips. My next tip is about resizing the slide size so you don’t have to use Slides for just presentations. I change the size to 8.5 x 11 all the time and create handouts for professional development or posters. That’s how I created this guide to Twitter and this information one-pager for our new teachers. Students can do this to create ebooks or digital flyers. Remember since it’s Slides, they can also embed videos or animated gifs too.
Just go to Insert>Videos and search YouTube, or enter a URL from YouTube or search your Drive. For animated gifs, click on by URL and paste the URL link in.
This also brings up another great tip. In most of the Google apps, you don’t have to leave the app to find images, you can add them straight from the app you are in! Go to Insert>Image>Search the Web and then look for images using the search box. These images have already been filtered for noncommercial use and are okay to use copyright wise.
You can also find images through an add-on. One of the copyright-free image sites I often use is called Unsplash. They have a Google Slides add-on, so again you don’t have to leave the app to find appropriate images. To add add-ons like this one, go to Add-ons>Get Add-ons and search for what you want to add. Click on install and give the app rights to your account. Once it loads, you will receive a pop up message that the add-on is loaded. Click the add-on menu and select the add-on to open it.
My next tip for Slides is a newer feature called Skip Slides. This literally lets you skip a slide in a presentation and not have it show when presenting. This is helpful if you have made a copy of a slideshow you received from another teacher and are adapting for your own use. You don’t necessarily have to delete slides, you can just skip over them. Right-click on a slide and select Skip Slide.
My last tip for Slides is about Closed Captioning. While in the presentation view, you can use this tool to capture your voice and provide real time closed captions at the bottom of your screen. To turn it on, click Present. In the toolbar, click the CC icon. I’m case you’re wondering, I’ve been a good five feet from my computer and it still picks up my voice.
This tool can help both audio and visual learners in your audience, whether it be your classroom or a group of teachers and also provide an opportunity for fluency with those students struggling with reading and language skills.
GOOGLE DOCS
Just like with Slides and searching for images without leaving the app, in Docs, you can also search the Internet without leaving the app too. Click on the Explore tool in the lower right corner, the one with the star, and you will have automatic access to the Google search engine. Recent topics that you have written about will appear as suggestions or you can also search for keywords in your documents from Google Drive, on the web, or search for images too.
Then you have one of my all time favorite tips in any Google app, forcing a copy of a document. This allows you to share a document with others and force them to make a copy of the document before opening it. It’s similar to having a template and works well with students, saving time instead of having them go to File>Make a copy.
To do this, click on the share icon, then click Get Sharable Link, and copy the link. Either in your browser or on a Google Doc, paste the URL. Look for the very last backslash in the URL and take out everything after this, from edit to the end and replace it with the word copy. This new URL is the one you will share with students. I usually double check the URL to make sure it works and forces students to make a copy and is linked to the correct document.
My last Docs tip is to use suggesting mode when giving feedback to students. There are actually three modes you can use in Docs: editing mode, which is the default mode and where you type your document. There’s also suggesting mode, where others can change the document by adding suggestions, which you see here in green and allows the owner of the document to accept or reject. Finally there’s viewing mode, where others can only view the document. Click on the dropdown arrow next to the pencil icon in the toolbar and select suggesting mode and edit the document as normal.
I like Google’s suggesting mode much more than Microsoft’s track changes feature, which I had started out using before becoming a Google addict. I remember liking it, but I recently had to use track changes to help a colleague edit a document and I had a hard time seeing where my suggested comments were compared to when I use Google’s feature. It felt much more clunky to use and I feel would be hard for younger students especially to understand. I like that Google’s suggesting mode, crosses out the original text with the suggestions and doesn’t get rid of anything, but you can still see the original text along with the new version and decide what you want to approve. For me, it looks very similar to what I would do on paper when editing. Give it a shot and see what you think.
GOOGLE DRIVE
And finally, my last tip is for Google Drive and it’s a big one. Don’t try and organize the share with me section. It’s impossible, because this is meant to be a list of shared documents. That is it’s whole function.
If you need the document again or want to organize it, add it to your Drive. Click on the document and then click on the Add to Drive icon in the toolbar. From there you can organize it into your folders.
The Google apps are so versatile and I go on and on with additional tips, but I’ll stop here for now. I learn new things and ways to use the apps as I talk with other teachers and grow my PLN, so I hope you have been able to find a few that work for you. Please share any other tips you have on my blog post with this episode’s transcripts or via Twitter.
TECH NEWS
Google Forms is getting an updated look and feel. If you remember, I first shared last spring that Google would be updating all of its apps to have a cleaner, more consistent look. They’ve finally gotten around to Forms and as you can see from this screen capture, the purple header is gone and the overall page is very crisp, while the entire background is white. It doesn’t look like too much else has changed.
My school district doesn’t have this yet, so I can’t say for sure what else may be different. We are on Google’s scheduled release system, which allows for a slower roll out with changes appearing about two weeks after Google pushes it out. However, you may be in a district that is on the rapid release rollout and may already have the new changes.
I mentioned the Closed captioning feature earlier, which also got a recent update. Closed captions would appear only at the bottom of the screen, but now you can choose either the top or bottom and change the font size. To turn this on when presenting, select the dropdown menu next to the Captions button on the toolbar. From there, you can then set the text size and screen position. Rapid release schools should have received this feature last week, while scheduled release districts will see this starting November 4th.
I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
This wraps up the 5th episode of the season and I want to hear from you! Let me know how you are using the tools and activities I’ve spotlighted, or other tools you are using, or what questions you have. You can connect with me via Twitter or Instagram at mspriester_itrt.
Thanks for watching and I’ll be back in 3 weeks with a new episode!
Ms Priester EDU 