#119 Google in education posts this week

November 6, 2017
Google Drawings is a great tool that is overlooked by many teachers. The strength of Drawings, besides the different features it provides for free, lies in its integration with Google Drive allowing you to easily integrate anything you create through Drawings into other services (i.e., Docs and Slides). We have already reviewed Google Drawings in several posts in the past and you can check this page to learn more about how to tap into the educational potential of this tool. In today’s post we are sharing with you this handy visual explaining demonstrating in a step-by-step process how you can get started creating your own visual using Google Drawings. Check it out and share with us your feedback in our Facebook page.
 

November 7, 2017
Google released yesterday a new interesting feature that will make it super easy for you to insert images into your Google Drive's documents, presentations or drawings. You now have  five options for image insertion in Google Docs, Slides and Drawings. These are : upload from computer, search the web, use images from your Google Drive, insert images from Google Photos or through URL.
‘If you select “Upload from computer,” you’ll be taken to your computer’s file manager, which many users are familiar with. If you select “Search the web,” “Drive,” or “Photos,” you’ll be taken to a menu on the righthand side of your screen that is easier to navigate and more intuitive to use. You can also drag and drop images directly from this menu into your document. If you select “By URL,” you’ll be given the option to input the specific URL for an image.’ Here is how to access image insertion options on Docs, Slides and Drawings:

It’s rare for a school to have what I would describe as “Awesome Internet Speeds.” Even at my house where I have super fast internet it can lag to open a document or reply for Google Classroom. I love how I can click on a reply button in an email of Google Classroom to quickly respond to a student comment, but it is not a good use of my time to wait for stuff to load. Add up those seconds… it matters.
Start with Gmail
For private comments, I like to start with Gmail for responding to students. UNLESS I am replying to every student because I asked them to put something in the private comments. In this case, I just click on the student names in the roster on the side of Google Classroom. When this is not the case, when students leave private comments on various assignments, I receive a notification in Gmail. There is a blue button “Reply” which launches Google Classroom in a new tab or if I am on my phone launches the Google Classroom app.

Good teaching always comes first. The best educators know that Educational Technology can enhance the learning experience for both teachers and students. When information is everywhere, I believe that educators must offer a different learning experience for our students. If you know me, you know that I love all things HyperDoc. I share resources connected to HyperDocs whenever I have something new to share. Today, I want to focus on the incredible educators who are doing so much more with HyperDocs. The links below are connected to educators and resources that influenced my growth as a HyperDoc Learner.

If you follow either one of us on Twitter, you will quickly find out that we have many things in common. Two of those being our passion for Flipgrid and HyperDocs. We are avid HyperDocs creators and have created many HyperDocs collaboratively and share them with our PLN on Twitter. We are also both Flipgrid Ambassadors and love sharing this amazing tool with other educators. We believe that powerful digital lesson design infused with the power of amplifying student voice is truly a game changer in the classroom.

Recently I received a question asking about inserting math symbols, expressions, and equations into Google Forms for quizzes. In the past I have blogged about the Equatio extension for this purpose, but the educator was looking for a no cost solution. As a previous math teacher, I am very sympathetic to the need for easier ways to represent math digitally. I also totally understand the financial constraints schools deal with, as I have worked in and with districts facing the same budget concerns.

According to Google, the new option allows you to insert an image in five ways: "Upload from computer", "Search the web", "Drive", "Photos", and "By URL". However this is missing an awesome option we have had for years, which is "Take a Snapshot". That feature allowed you to take a picture with your webcam, and then easily insert it into the document, presentation, or drawing you were working on. This is a much used and loved feature for teachers and students to allow users to add real-life pictures quickly and easily. I have referenced it in many of my activities including "Stop Motion Animation with Google Slides" and "Learn Math with your Face". So what are we to do if "Take a Snapshot" is really going away? In this blog post I will share with you the best alternative I have found so far. It is actually very simple to use, with just one small extra step in the process, and works great with Docs, Slides, and Drawings. See below for the details.

Google Docs lets you add lots of different content including text, links, images, emojis, tables, charts, and more. However, one thing we all wish we could add is videos. Having multimedia content in a Google Doc would be a powerful and engaging way to share information, provide learning content, supercharge a report, liven up a newsletter, create a HyperDoc and more.
Unfortunately this blog post is not to announce that this feature has suddenly been released, although I hope someday that will happen and make this post obsolete. However, in the meantime there are some clever workarounds for including video content with a Google Doc. In this blog post we will take a look at four different options, starting with the most basic and working our way up to the most advanced. See below for directions and examples for each of these four workarounds for adding video to a Google Doc.

Today, fonts are as important as ever:
They can set the tone and intention for a document, slideshow, spreadsheet, or image
They can make it easier for someone to read the information you are sharing
They allow for creativity when expressing your ideas
They can even be used poorly like in this hilarious video about the Papyrus font
However, if you are a user of the Google suite of programs, at first glance you may think you are limited to about two dozen fonts, since that is all that show up by default in the font choice drop-down menu. Quite the opposite though, Google actually provides over 800 web fonts to choose from for your Google projects! In this blog post we will take a look at how to explore all of the web fonts available from Google, how to add them to your list of available fonts, how to use them, and some of the most interesting fonts for you to try out.

November 9, 2017
Over the last few weeks, Google Drive released a number of interesting updates to enhance your overall Drive experience. Here is a quick round-up of the recent releases that are relevant to us as teachers and educators. Some of them have already been featured in previous posts and others are new. Check them out in this article.

1- New languages added to Docs, Slides, Sheets and Forms editor temples