G Gems 34: user accountability & tracking in G Suite

Google for Education's G Suite offers a wealth of tools for tracking purposes.

Whether that be tracking user access and trends, collaborators' input, document updates or as an audit trail for email conversations.

Here's a summary of some of the tools I and my colleagues use regularly both in the classroom and in the office.

Activity Dashboard
The activity dashboard for Google documents, available by clicking the sparkling icon (top right) 

gives document owners full access to see who has viewed the document, who has been shared the document as well as a trend timeline of when it was accessed.

This proves very useful when sharing documents with a number of users to contribute and update as you can easily see who has been working on the document and who hasn't at a glance.

Version history
This feature is often overlooked by new users to G Suite. You can access via the file menu or by clicking the hyperlink at the top centre of the toolbar that usually reads something like "all changes saved to drive" or "last edit made X minutes ago by ......"

The side bar will open up giving you the various autosaved versions of the document from its very beginning, including which users have made changes (using a handy colour code).

All versions can be renamed (I often rename version 1 "original") and also copied at any time.

Any previous version can also be restored with a single click if changes are rejected.

Cell history
This great new feature works like version history but for each specific cell within Google Sheets.
Using this feature you can exactly which user has updated a cell and the timestamp. Where a cell has been edited multiple times a full history is visible by edit, user and timestamp.

Comment history
Within Google docs, once a comment has been resolved, it flies away. However, click on the comment icon (top right) and the full comment history can be brought back at any time.

Perfect for demonstrating an ongoing dialogue on the progress or changes within any document.

Gmail delegated access - allows access to send on behalf of a service account/team account within your domain (but shows who you're dealing with)

To set up delegated access for another user, from the main account go to settings > accounts and invite specific users.

Those users will then get an alert asking them to verify their account. It can take about 30 minutes for the change to take effect but soon they'll be able to select the delegated account in the drop down.

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If delegated access to Gmail accounts isn't for you or your organisation you could consider setting up a Google Group as a collaborative inbox.

Collaborative inboxes allow members of the google group to send and share across the group with all messages arriving via Gmail ( I use the forum option in my Gmail settings).

G Gems 27: Optional extras 👨‍🏫

Add bitmojis to your docs and emails with the bitmoji chrome extension. It's really simple.  

Personally, I love a bitmoji as it grabs attention quickly and also makes docs more interesting. The range of different images is great once you've customised your own bitmoji and a quick copy and paste will insert your chosen graphic into your docs.  The chrome extension also talks to your gmail and gives you a bitmoji icon in compose for you add an image if you want to.

Add emojis to document names, folder names or bookmarks


Are you often left wondering if you've chosen the right emoji?
Check out https://emojitranslate.com/ where you can enter text and have it translated into an appropriate emoji. Then just copy and paste anywhere you like.  Add it to a document name, folder name or bookmark to customise your files. 

Are you using a team drive?
A colleague recently wanted his department team drive to contain a link to a resource website that was pulling together files from various different places. He wasn't keen on having everyone add the website to their bookmarks as he wanted his team drive to be a "one stop shop" for everything.

We came up with a simple solution using Google Drawings. We created a simple image, included the link as a hyperlink and then save the image as a pdf in the team drive for everyone to access. Now all they have to do is click on the link.

Here's an example that works a bit like your own version of symbaloo: Department weblinks

G Suite Gems 20: getting better and better

In a week where I've seen people yet again encouraging people to move away from Google because of "security" alongside the standard "I've been trying for ages but I just can't get on with google" my sense of humour has had a real test! 

Dispel the myths and read for yourself here Google For Education and GDPR and here Privacy & Security 

So with that cleared up, let's embrace the world of G Suite and see what's new:

Slides - users with portable IOS devices will now find they have a draw option when presenting a slide deck on screen. This means you (or your students) can now write directly on a slide to annotate, comment or highlight key areas. This could be a real game changer for many in the classroom, especially maths, science and MFL teachers where you can now free write symbols, equations and special characters without needing to insert. 

New Google Sites - a welcome update: users of new google sites can now upload their own favicon (that's the little guy who appears in a browser tab or in your bookmark bar). This can help your site visitors more easily recognise your site, and help you build your brand.

Upload a favicon 

Google Docs Menu update - one of the things I love about G Suite is how things are constantly changing and that's down to the feedback submitted AND the fact that Google actually listen to it. 

I'm loving the update to Docs menu that has separated out text and highlight into their own boxes. I've lost count of the number of times I've highlighted when I meant to change font colour or vice versa but no more! 

Google Drive searching - searching in Drive is so simple but I know many people still spend ages scrolling through trying to find a file rather than heading straight to it. The update to drive to allow you to see the 4 most recent files as Quick Access was an excellent addition and now comes another: 


The “Shared with Me” section shows the files that have been shared with you by another owner (searching by owner is a great way to find docs by the way) but the lovely people at Google are going to start organising this section for you so you may also see people listed, along with files they’ve shared with you. Simply click on a document to quickly open it. 

Check out google's blogspot here
And finally... it's now less that a week to the @Appsevents Google Summit in Wembley. I'll be heading along for day 3 and looking forward to catching up with friends but I'm also really pleased to see support staff bootcamps running on the Friday. In my opinion, a school's support staff are key to getting the whole organisation to embrace collaboration through GforE. When these unsung heroes understand how they can work more efficiently within their own teams and beyond,  and champion this, the rest of the staff will have to get on board. 

If you're a member of school support staff, get along to one of these bootcamps and save yourselves a whole heap of work in the long run.

G Suite Gems 18: Don't Do It Yourself (with videos)

Don't Do It Yourself!

1. Explore for great slide design
 If you don't like the designs offered to you as standard in Slides, use the Explore option to create some more for you

2. Creating easy organisational charts in Google Sheets 
Avoid spending ages fiddling around with layouts and updating when staff or structures change.

3. Add an automatic table of contents in Google Docs
It's like actual magic!

 4. Fake sites for evaluating with students
Check out these great AND CURRENT sites for teaching students about evaluating web sources - originally shared by Eric Curts   Fake sites - hours saved searching for or even creating suitable resources. I particularly like this one, sounds very dangerous!

5. Make the students think

I love this kind of approach to thinking and they make great starters or points for discussion around learning. Here's an example, I can't remember where I came across this but show this to your students and see what THEY can tell YOU about what it is telling us. Enjoy!

what patterns can you see? It's a great way to represent familiar material in unfamiliar ways to boost independent thinking.

I've recently set up a Youtube Channel. 

I'm always open to feedback and suggestions so please feel free to drop me a message.

G Suite Gems 13: I can't believe it's not BETTer!

I can't believe it's not BETTer! 

So last Friday I was fortunate, after 3 years of trying, to get the chance to attend the Bett show 2018. To be honest I didn't really know what to expect having only ever visiting Excel once before for the Motor Show.

On arrival, as a newbie, I must admit to feeling a little intimidated and overwhelmed. Aside from getting zapped at the entrance and given a lanyard, very little information was shared so in I walked with trepidation to a maze of stands.

Now don't get me wrong, some of what I saw was great. I really enjoyed listening to a keynote speech by Bram Bout, Director of Google for Education, talking with others about the soft skills employers are looking for these days: problem solving and collaborative skills topping the list. Take note careers advisors and teachers, #curiosity is key!

Dean is a former teacher/Leader of Learning Technologies
 in 2 secondary academies

I had a great time catching with my pal and former colleague Dean Stokes, who is UK Director of the excellent Appsevents.com - I'm always eager to see what Dean and his colleagues Ben Rouse and Oli Trussell have to share and am never surprised to see their stand packed out. When I got there Dean was in the middle of a demo on using Google Classroom and Quizzes alongside Science Journal with a group of around 30 keen-faced individuals. Talking to Dean afterwards, that was their 55th demo of the week (and counting).

No matter how much I think I know, these guys always manage to hit me with something new and nothing is too much trouble. It was through talking to Ben that I came across Squidnotes.com as a note taking app that has tremendous potential for maths and MFL teachers particularly as it could remove the annoyance of inserting special characters and accents.

As I continued round the massive space, weaving in and out of what seemed like endless rows of Interactive Whiteboards and fad robots, it struck me that when you sift through all that, actually, there wasn't much individuality. In fact, some of what was on display seemed almost dated already. This surprised me but perhaps it shouldn't have. Is it just that those of using #Edtech somehow take it for granted and don't appreciate what we have?

After a Costa with the GEG Uk group - thanks to Andy Cooper for arranging and Andrew Caffrey for buying - it was off to a talk about how Google fits within the new GDPR and then to look at some Chrome Flipbooks with Active pen and IT solutions for School-wide notifications.

So here are the things that stood out for me from Bett 2018:

• Appsevents.com for G Suite training needs. These people really know their stuff and how to engage an audience 
• Equatio, a maths extension from the Texthelp team which is FREE for teachers 
• Use the Explore option in Google Sheets to make people think you're a formula
  
  wizard. Ask the question in word form and then "discover the formula" and use it. You can also use Explore to link from docs/slides to other docs without disrupting your workflow - Check out @gsuite’s Tweet: G Suite Tip 
• If you're looking for an IT system to send school-wide notifications, check out www.netsupportsoftware.com who offer a 30 day free trial for up to 50 PCS/laptops 

So there you go, my first BETT impressions - underwhelmed by much, inspired by some but worth it?   Probably.

G Suite Gems 11: Change your way of thinking

Change your way of thinking: 

Using Slides where you might once have used Word or Publisher 

Explore the potential of Slides

When you've worked in a particular way for a substantial amount of time it can be easy to get stuck in a fixed mindset and way of working. When I first started using G Suite my first summary was  pretty much "Docs is Word, Sheets is Excel and Slides is Powerpoint but you can share and you don't have to save".

In the most part people took that on board and because everyone is always busy, not everyone had time to explore new or different features. So for a couple of years people, myself included, bemoaned the issues of bringing a previous 'handbook' or 'guide' created in Word across to Drive, opening as a Google Doc and then finding the formatting messed up. For some, it was too frustrating and they reverted back to the familiar Word format, others persevered making the necessary readjustments and a few explored other options. It was here that the breakthrough came.

No-one had ever envisaged making a booklet using Slides, possibly because they thought page set up was only available in landscape. Well, with custom page set ups, anything is possible. Not only can you easily position titles, text boxes and images but you can very easily add video with the updated Insert functions of Slides. Add to that the ability to link slides together you can easily create a document that can be easily navigated online. 

We all know that teaching methods in maths have changed a lot over the years and as a parent myself, sometimes I struggled to know the best way to help my daughter. 

Here's an example of a document I put together for my school with the help of resources from the excellent corbettmaths.com to help parents/carers support their child's learning/homework in maths.

Supporting your child in mathematics - take a look at this video based resource.

We're also now working on the use of Slides for a Student's Guide to the Academy for our new intake in September 2018.

The other advantage is of course that a document created in Slides can be published to the web and placed on your website with auto-play and auto-advance settings to play as a scrolling video.

Oh and why not use Google Drawings to create adverts, posters and logos?

It's far more accessible than you might think! 

G Suite Gems 4

Want to create new docs really quickly? 

I came across this handy tip in one of the G+ communities posted by @JakeMillerTech.

I'm constantly creating new docs, sheets and slides from scratch for quick use in the classroom and beyond and I've now installed these handy bookmarks on my toolbar ⬇ things have got a lot quicker.

Just go to your bookmarks manager, select add page and enter the following:

For a new Google Doc: docs.google.com/create

For a new Google Slide: slides.google.com/create

For a new Google Sheet: sheets.google.com/create

Then all you have to do is one simple click to open a new blank document at any time. Simple!

Autocrat Update

Did you know that Autocrat now works with Slides?

Well it does now, meaning you can now set your responses in Google Sheets to merge into a Google Slide template of your choice. A great way to quickly populate certificates for students or colleagues upon completion of tasks, courses or as recognition rewards. 

When it comes to selecting the output format in Step 4, Slides will only allow the single document mode rather than multiple documents (classic mode) but you soon get quick and easy PDF certificates all in one place.