#96 Useful Google in Education posts this week

Spaces is an excellent collaborative platform from Google. As a teacher, you can use Spaces to create a Space for your class and invite students to join it using a generated link. Spaces allows you to share a wide variety of materials including web links, photos, posts and many more. Members of a Space can interact with each other by commenting on posts and sharing feedback. Spaces is free of charge and is available for the web, Android, and iOS.

Google Apps in Classrooms and Schools 32 Ways to Use Google Apps Julia Stiglitz Google Apps for Education Team @juliastiglitz

Chrome App Store is teeming with tons of interesting applications that can help you in your instruction. We have gone through the piles there and selected for you this collection of what we think are some of the best Chrome Apps that work with Google Drive. We arranged the apps into this personalized taxonomy containing the following digital activities :

CloudConvert is an excellent converter to use for converting almost anything you want. We have tried several converting utilities in the past and this one stands out from the crowd. It is fast (even with large files), simple, easy to use, and most important of all, it is integrated with Google Drive and other cloud services such as Dropbox. ‘It is possible to use Google Drive or Dropbox both as input or output destination for your converted files. This makes it possible to start a large video conversion, leave the app and just wait until the file appears in your Google Drive / Dropbox.’

Google Keep is one of the best free note taking tools out there. It provides a wide variety of features that allow you to easily create and share notes and lists. And for mobile users, they have the added feature to create audio notes. Just a few days ago, Google announced the integration of Keep into Google Docs. This means that you can access your Keep notes while working on Docs, drag and drop your notes into your document and search your notes without having to leave Docs. We have already covered the basic Google Keep tips teachers using this tool should know about (see the visual at the bottom of the post to learn more). Today, we are sharing with you this handy chart incorporating useful guidelines to help you make the best of Google Keep in your instruction. Upon clicking on any of the titles below, you will be directed to a page in Keep Help where you will get to learn more about the corresponding feature.

If you are a heavy user of Google Drive, chances are you already have so much of your content stored there. While Google Drive does provide some excellent organizing features that allow you to sort out and categorize your content into an easily navigable interface , but sometimes the search process can be really overwhelming and this is why knowing how to smartly search your Drive can save you so much time and enable you to quickly locate and access your saved data. The visual we have for you today (for those of you who haven’t seen it yet) features 8 excellent search tips to help you conduct effective searches in your Google Drive. Whether you are looking for documents that contain specific quotes or phrases, documents shared with you or with a particular person, document under specific titles or type …etc, the tricks below will absolutely help you easily find them. All of the tips are taken from Drive Help where you can access more information and details on everything related to the workings of Google Drive.

The Best Google Cardboard and Google Expeditions Resources for Teachers! I’ve been curating everything I can find to help teachers learn about Google Expeditions and Google Cardboard, and I have created the Ultimate Google Cardboard and Expeditions Resource Guide for Teachers. I am not an expert on virtual reality or Google Cardboard and Expeditions, …

As you probably all know by now, the old version of Google Drive template gallery is going away very soon and only the new version will be available. New template galleries embed a wide range of interesting and professionally designed templates users can utilize to create different kinds of content in Docs, Slides, Sheets and Forms. We have already reviewed some samples of good Google Docs templates teachers can use in their instruction (i.e., for creating lesson plans, designing brochures and newspapers, making project proposals and many more). In today’s post, we are sharing with you this selected collection of Google Forms templates to use for a variety of educational purposes. More specifically, you can use them to create forms for : event registration, event feedback, exit ticket, worksheet, course evaluation, assessment, and contact information.

That’s where this visual from Sylvia Duckworth comes in handy. Learn the ins and outs of the sharing and privacy settings of Google Docs to help keep classroom information safe and to teach your students how to be responsible digital citizens.

Great ideas can surface in unexpected places. We created Keep to capture your thoughts anytime, anywhere—with smart tools to help you easily organize your notes, ideas and to dos.

Starting today, you can capture your ideas for work: Keep is now a part of G Suite. You can also take your ideas and notes from Keep and easily add them to Docs for easier brainstorming.