Suggesting Edits in Google Docs

There has been a recent change to the edits you can make to a Google document.  Now, as long as you  have Commenting or Editing permissions, you can "Suggest Edits" to a document.  You start a suggestions by placing your cursor where you want the edit to go.  You select "Suggesting" from the menu on the top right of the document.  You'll see a pencil icon up there.  Then type the suggestion.  It will show up in the document, but not be official until the owner "OKs" the suggestion.

Here are your choices of edits.  Notice, the Editing choice is "grayed" out because the example I chose came from a document that I only had "Commenting" permission.

When you type in your suggestion, it will show up and a "post-it" will show up on the right to show what the suggestion was and where it should go.  The owner then needs to approve or disapprove of the change.  The owner gets an email to notify them of the suggestion.

This is a pretty nice feature.  It makes the suggestions a little nicer than just highlighting and making the suggestion in the "Comment" box.  Next time you are collaborating with someone, give the "Suggesting" option a try.

Getting Started with Google Classroom

This year, Google introduced Classroom as a tool for teachers in Google Apps for Education domains.  Classroom has proven to be a very helpful tool to help teachers and students work together and keep their documents organized.  Classroom is built to perform some tasks very well.  It is great at providing teachers a platform to make announcements (and other communications) to their students, distribute and collect assignments from students (with all of the great features of Google Drive), and provide an online collection of digital resources for their students to access at any time.

Google Classroom is a very nice tool for teachers to utilize.  Below is a video of how a teacher would create their Google Classroom, as well as what that classroom looks like as a student.  It will walk you through what you need to know to get started with your students.  Give it a look.

Now that you've seen it in action, you probably want to give it a try.  Go ahead!

Here are some suggestions as to how you might use Google Classroom with your students.

Share Materials - Use the “Announcement” to distribute files, Google Drive files, YouTube videos, and Links to your students. It can also share to any other classes you teach, as well.

Class Discussions - Use the “Announcement” to pose questions for class discussions. Your students will be able to reply to you and each other.

Distribute and Collect files - Use “Assignment” to distribute and collect files to your students in an organized manner. Your folder in Drive will thank you for it. It will also allow for the ownership of the file to pass back and forth with the student.

Shared editing of a file - Give the students access to edit a document with their classmates. The will be able to co-edit and create some great work. They could create a Presentation by sharing a Google Slides presentation, then each student could add a slide.

Go Paperless - Pass out and collect everything right in your classroom.

Google Classroom is a pretty awesome new tool. Google is working to make improvements, as well. I am curious to see where it ends up, but I think teachers will love it.

Draftback for Google Docs using Chrome

Have you ever wanted to analyze the development of your writing?  This Chrome extension - Draftback - will allow you to do it with relative ease.  Draftback allows you to play back your revision history of any Google Doc you can edit.

Download it from here - Click the link

Read more about it here - Click the link

Here is what it looks like when you open it on one of your docs.

Here is what it looks like when it is playing back.

This might be awesome for teachers wanting to analyze the process their students are going through when writing.  Give it a look!

Starting a Google Hangout

I frequently get asked about how to create a Google Hangout.  Google Hangouts are a great way to video chat with other Google users.  They are free and easy to setup and use.  There are 3 ways to easily start a Google Hangout.

1.  Go into your Google Plus account   "+ You" on any Google Page  

     Find the "Home" menu on the top-left side of the page
     Choose Hangouts
     Select Video Hangout

2.  Go to your GMail page
     Find a contact on the bottom-left corner
     Hover over that contact
     Click the camera button to start Hangout


3.  Go to your Calendar page
     Create a new event
     Include video call
     Invite other users
     The event will contain a link to join video Call.

Here is a video demonstrating all of these methods.

Shared with Me is Back

Google has listened to many users that wanted their "Shared with Me" button back in the new Google Drive.  Google changed "Incoming" back to "Shared with Me."  It also added some features that will be demonstrated in the video below.

The changes include-
1.  Being able to click on the object - Incoming would only allow "hovering," when you wanted to work with an item in your "Incoming" folder.

2.  Being able to drag an item directly into a folder that is on your Google "My Drive."

3.  Being able to select multiple items at one time.  You can do this on a mac by holding down the command key.  This used to be an option in the old drive, because you could select with check boxes.  I say, "Welcome Back!" to this feature.

Check out these changes in Google Drive.

RowCall Add-on for Google Sheets

Teachers frequently collect a lot of data with Google Forms.  The data then gets manipulated in a Google Sheet.  I hear a lot of requests for the ability to look at each student's data by itself.  This Add-on, RowCall, will automatically create a tab for each different entry in a column.  This means that each student would have their own tab in the spreadsheet, as well as being part of the whole grouping of data.  Check out the tutorial below.

Sort and Filter Google Sheets

Many times there is a need to organize your data in a spreadsheet.  Here is a video that demonstrates how to sort Google Sheet data and also how to filter it.  It makes using your data much more informative.