G Suite Gems 16: Race against the machine

Race against the machine

As #edtech continues to go from strength to strength, here a few super tips that take advanatge of Machine Learning.

1. Google's OCR
(optical character recognition)

With the changes to GCSE content, I've recently seen and spoken to a number of people who are recycling questions from old text books. Many have sat for hours with the text book and typed up the questions into a worksheet when they could have used google's OCR capabilities.

Now you can simply take a photo of that text book page, save it to drive and choose to open with Google Docs. OCR will do the rest.

 OCR returns this result

It's not always perfect so you may have to correct the odd bit but it's still so much quicker than doing it yourself!   This also works in Google Keep and if you have a Pixel phone, it's a built in option.

2. Demoslams are great! - 3 of the best tips
Earlier this week I watched Lee Webster's Demoslam broadcast (subscribe here) and was delighted to pick up some great new ideas on how machine learning can work for you. I've already used most of them and it's half-term (tinker time).

a) Firstly,  machine learning using the explore function for Google Slide design - I'd never tried this but it's great. Start a blank template. Input the title of your slide and then choose an image from Google. Drag it in (more on that in a moment thanks to the Demoslam) and then click Explore.

let Explore suggest themes for slides

Explore will then suggest a range of slide layouts for you. Smooth and brilliant. 
Why not Watch a quick demo here ?

b) If you've just watched the video above you may have seen another cool trick that the Demoslam shared for bringing images from Google into your docs. If you missed it, have another watch and see if you can spot it. Clue: there's no clicking involved.

c) Resizing images for new google sites - anyone who has been using new sites may have found image sizing tricky, especially in footers, I know I did at first! But then along came the Demoslam and boom!

All you need to do is upload and size 1 image correctly. Then you can just import and drag others over the top and it will "same size" them for you. Then click on the new resized image to move it into position.

3 great additions to my repertoire and I hope you find them useful. Thanks to Lee and all the Slammers involved (sorry I can't remember everyone's names).

3. Team Drive update

If you haven't seen it yet, you can now email members of a Team Drive direct from Drive itself. Really handy! If you haven't got this feature yet it's on a gradual roll out so be patient.








4. Commenting on Drive
With the new addition of being able to comment on PDFs, Office files, videos and images collaboration just got a whole lot more powerful.

Check out how my MFL department are using this new feature to share examples of student work with added comments.

open in new window and the + appears

highlight an area of text

add comments to guide students on what to include in their work

And finally....

Alice Keeler shared this tip for sharing YouTube videos at certain points.

To share a Youtube video from a certain starting point , right click on the video as it's playing and select copy video URL at current time and share this link. Awesome!

G Suite Gems 9

⏲ 5 ways to save time and space with G Suite ⏲

1. Clip it Good - save time by saving images from the web direct to your google photos

We all remember the days of having to right click, save image as, selecting a folder (and then probably uploading that saved image to our Google Drive).

Well, if you want to save images direct to google photos with a simple click try this handy extension:

Clip It Good 

Once installed, refresh and then:
Right click - from the drop down select Clip it Good and then Clip it Good which in this case is the folder I've chosen in Google Photos to send all images to. (You can name your destination folder however you like).

2. Save time and save space on your bookmarks bar


From this:

We've all had times when our bookmark bar has got so full that we start to lose our bookmarks off the end of the bar, kind of defeating the object of a one click bookmark.

So why not shorten your bookmarks to just the logo?

Just right click on any bookmark and select edit and delete all the text leaving just the URL and click the blue SAVE button

Step 1

Step 2

This will leave you with just the symbol/logo that you instantly recognise, leaving you either with a very tidy bar or acres of space for more bookmarks. Shazam!


To this:

3. Slide Skip - OMG!! A game changer for regular presenters.

How long have a been waiting for something like this? For those of us who often put together presentations using a slide deck, Slides now offers the option to temporarily sleep or 'skip' slides in a deck. Just select the slide and then in the tool bar under SLIDE, select SKIP SLIDE.  Slides will then skip that slide when you are in presenter mode. To reselect in, just click on the skipped slide and uncheck 'Skip slide'.

This is perfect in my school where we use similar presentations for a number of events - we no longer have to create a whole new version of the presentation and then delete slides we don't want. In theory we could have 1 slide deck for the whole year and just skip irrelevant slides for each event.  

Here you can see 'Skip Slide" is checked and the corresponding slide has the crossed through eye icon
in the slide sorter window. When presenting, this slide will be skipped automatically.

Brilliant!!

4. Images for actions 

Have you ever tried creating images that force actions? 

For example, perhaps an image of the cover from Of Mice and Men that is actually a hyperlink to a Drive folder full of resources on the novel or a page on a website? 

Any image can be made into a hyperlink really easily. Here's a link to a basic example of Sean Bean helping us open a new blank google doc. (As a GoT fan, I'm still not over it)

To do this for yourself, right click on the image > link > enter the URL for the action desired so the link to a folder, file or webpage.

5. And finally...
Google Keep location based reminders - great for those who work at different locations.

I use it on my phone and macbook, set reminders for certain locations as I work between 2 sites. The reminders pop up when I get to the selected location and not before by using my current location. Clever stuff right?

I made the mistake of showing my wife and now she uses it for a shopping list, adds things we need, selects our local supermarket as a location and has added me to the Keep note as a collaborator so now, when I'm driving home, I get near to Tesco and up pops a lovely message to get milk! 😆

In some training I ran for support staff this week, that 1 thing in particular was easily the most popular amongst the ladies who suddenly developed mischievous looks on their faces.

G Suite Gems 8

Happy New Year 🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾

I don't know about you but I don't hold with this "new year, new me" philosophy, nor do a wait for a specific date to start making changes.

For me, if it's something you want to do, learn or achieve, just GET ON WITH IT.

As we begin 2018 I've found that I've enjoyed writing and sharing this blog and have been pleasantly surprised by the feedback and audience it has attracted. So here's hoping my contributions continue to give people ideas, solutions and make their lives easier - because that's what floats my boat.

With that in mind, to kick off 2018 here are a few things I've come across personally that could have a big impact in the classroom, office or business.

Padlet - a great way to share links with colleagues or students

I'd not come across padlet before but what a great little tool! I think it can be incredibly useful for removing the need for those frustrations like "Where did you find that?" or "What was the link we needed Sir?"

There are loads of public examples which could be used immediately or you can create and customise your won very easily. I've started mine for sharing add-ons/extensions etc with colleagues, it's early days and it will grow rapidly I'm sure - take a look here: G Suite Gem Padlet

Alternatively, here are some educational examples from a padlet user called Lisa that may be of interest School Hyperdocs by Lisa

Use Google Keep to extract text from photos 
Here's a really handy tweet from @GoogleforEdu with video on how you can use your phone camera and Google Keep to extract text from sticky notes etc >  integrate Keep with your camera
Give it a try!

Tab Scissors extension   

Got lots of tabs open and want to split the screens quickly? Try Tab Scissors extension which does it for you at the touch of a button

Timelines in Google Sheets
Easily create timelines for a range of subjects or uses with this great addition from KnightLabs.com 

Timelines have so many uses in so many areas but can appear like a minefield to create digitally if you're not sure where to start - this great addition walks you though it and give some great examples too.  Check out the instructional video here.

Aside from obvious uses in history lessons, try using this with Google sheets in the following areas:

English: Storyline development, character development, biographies, Author publication dates

Science: Discoveries of elements, planets, space exploration dates etc

Geography: Timeline of populations over time, geographical changes over time

PE: rule changes over time, equipment changes, history of major events, world record times

Music: Timeline of musical genres and their influences, biography of musicians

Business/Economics: Global economy & growth, growth of major companies/corporations

Technology: Development of technology over time, development of tools over the years

Here's a great example with a timeline of the life of Whitney Houston 


Enjoy and wishing everyone a fantastic 2018.