Google in Education posts this week #65

Do you remember when Google Docs was known as Writely? Yeah, that was a really long time ago, but since then, the Google Docs platform has gone from strength to strength. Google is constantly adding new features to its word processing suite, which consists of Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Drawings, and Apps Script. Each added…

Today, Google made it easier than ever to have quizzes scored for you and to show students their scores. Now when you create a Google Form you can go into the Form settings and choose the quiz option. Within the quiz option you can choose to have your questions scored as students answer them. You can also choose to show students their scores as well as correct answers. See my screenshot below to learn where you can find the new quiz scoring options.

With Lesson Plan Tool for Docs enabled you can search for standards-aligned lesson plan resources within your Google Documents. To perform a search simply open the add-on then select a standard from the drop-down menu that appears on the right-hand side of your document. You can preview any of the resources that appear in the search by simply clicking on them and opening them in a new tab. When you find a resource that you like, you can click again to add it into your document.

Writer says, "YouTube offers a bunch of handy editing tools that often go overlooked by users. One of those is the option to rotate videos that have been shot in vertical mode when they should have been shot horizontally. Another great feature is the face blurring tool built into the video editor. You can learn about those features and more in my video embedded below."

Google Apps has its own unique quirks that can make life more efficient. Here are 10 tips EVERY teacher should know.

Allow audience members to ask questions during a presentation. Google Slides allows the speaker to collect questions from the audience and respond.

New Google Sites Cheat Sheet Link to digital copy: goo.gl/At9B2p Sites Menu Overview Site Customization Options - Add content, organize pages, customize theme. Insert Menu: Click to add any of the following elements into your page to add content to your si...

But in addition to just watching videos on YouTube, there are also dozens of keyboard shortcuts you can use to improve your viewing experience. These include keys to jump around in the video, change speed, adjust sound, switch the view, and more.

Google does not seem to have any official documentation on these keyboard shortcuts, so these are ones I have discovered by trial and error, or from other users who have posted online. Because of this, some shortcuts may only work in certain browsers (Chrome is always your safest bet) or may go away without warning.
See below for my list of useful YouTube keyboard shortcuts every teacher and student should know.

A couple of weeks ago I published a tutorial on how to create an image-based quiz on Formative. The image-based quizzes that you create in Formative can be embedded into your classroom blog where your students can then answer the questions in the quiz. In my video embedded below I demonstrate how to create the quiz, how to embed it into your blog, and I show you a student's perspective of the quiz as embedded into a blog.

I became a Google+ user this week and I like it. From what I can tell it lets you do pretty much everything Facebook lets you do with some bonuses including being able to edit your status updates and comments and that you can select who the feed goes to via the circle(s) in which you share your updates. The circles I'm using are colleagues, co-workers, GTA, friends, family, volleyball. The status updates still don't have a feature which I really want: nesting of comments. Is that really so hard??? It does let you tag people in your status which I find useful.