G Suite Gem 6

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄Who's ready for a Christmas Party ?🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

Let's start at the Office.

Be Awesome this Christmas and use Office Documents in Drive!

I work with a number of people who are very used to and comfortable with Microsoft Office and have a large number of historic files that they want to keep using without converting them to Google Docs, sheets or slides. This is often due to concerns that some formatting might be affected.

These guys were very grateful to hear about Awesome Drive from aodocs.com and have gone away to give it a try. Essentially, this clever extension allows you to create, edit and save Office files within Google Drive. Great hey? 

Here's a short video from EdTech Tutorials to show you how it works. Enjoy! 

Teach yourself about Script Editor

Prior to visiting the Appsevents Google Summit for Education in October, I had never written any sort of code or script. As I swapped workshop midway (which was encouraged) I was fortunate to find the excellent Oli Trussell just finishing up with instructions and letting everyone try appscripting for themselves. Massive Faux pas on my part! However, just a short conversation with Oli and a further look at the resources from the day in my own time got me interested. 

That was October.  

Fast forward to December and I've finally found some time to do some research and have successfully written a code to embed Twitter into one of my Google Sites (only to find the feature was added anyway 2 days later 🤣🤣🤣) and also learnt to code a pop up message to show on opening a document using HTML and Script Editor. Check out https://www.w3schools.com/ and click on the try it yourself to learn for yourself. 

Attaching emails in Gmail 

A friend of mine uses Gmail at work but has been frustrated an when he used Outlook he could always attach an email another email for referencing or providing context. He asked me to see if it could be done in Gmail and the answer is YES!. 

Follow the steps here to attach an email to another email message in Gmail or 

(watch this video from Bettercloud) 

The great news for me is that it also work with Inbox for Gmail, which personally, I L💙VE. (Another thanks due to Oli T for introducing me to this extension - I've never had such an organised and empty inbox!) 

G Suite Gems 3

Using G Suite to celebrate hard work and reduce workload.

   

Use Google Forms with Autocrat to create a feedback loop in your setting. 

A while ago now, I was searching for a way to recognise all the hard work and effort of colleagues that can sometimes, and unintentionally, go unrewarded. I approached my Head with a proposal for what we call a "Pat on the back". 

The loop is simple; colleagues have access to the google form via our website (staff only area using page level permissions in old sites) and if they feel a colleague deserves some recognition for anything, they can submit a form with their reason. 

On submission the Autocrat add-on generates a PDF (from a google docs template) which is emailed directly to the Head and her PA. A short 5 minute meeting is then set up where the member of staff is invited to meet with the Head and the citation/reason is shared with them and the Head thanks them for making a difference to a colleagues working life.  The PDF is then also kept on the person's file.

This has proved a very popular feedback loop and our Head really enjoys both receiving the citations and also meeting with the staff to congratulate them. Many are often unaware that they have been given a "pat on the back". 

It's really simple, takes very little time but sometimes a little goes a long way, especially when everyone is working their socks off. 

Why not give it a try and give your colleagues a virtual 'pat on the back" and see what effect it has on them?

Another way that we've used add-ons in our organisation has massively reduced the admin workload. I work across 2 secondary academies and previously our parental consultation and pupil target setting process was very heavily paper-based, often requiring folders to be prepared weeks in advance with hard copies of various data, forms to be completed and records to be kept.

By using a google sheet containing all pupils, we've been able to completely remove the need for paper copies as all notes are now made in the sheet itself (using filter views to avoid any filtering or sorting issues). Staff record the notes from the pupil meetings including attendance, SEND matters, parental concerns and 3 SMART targets. A parent email address is also collected and FormMule then sends parents a copy of the meeting notes which can be referred to at any time.    

At the next meeting later in the year, previous targets are reviewed and RAG rated and new discussions held and documented for the cycle to start again. Our admin team estimate that this change has saved them weeks of work!