Nearly a year ago, I shared a #EduGIF–and post–about how to change your default font in Google Docs. Every time I tweet this GIF, people go bonkers celebrating their newfound ability to make their favorite font their default. It got me wondering… what fonts are more popular than others? Well, let’s find out! Tell me: what’s your favorite font? And after your answer, you’ll get to see the top 15 fonts!
Category: Blog
Keyboard Shortcuts in Google Calendar
The new school year started for my colleagues and I a few weeks ago. One process that I have to go through at the beginning of each school year is getting all of the year’s events onto my Google Calendar. This is a tedious process, but it’s an important one for me. The main task here is copying events from our school’s calendar onto my calendar. The school calendar is jam-packed with stuff and I only need a subset of those events.
While going week-by-week through the school year, I thought “There has got to be a quicker way to navigate through this!” Well, I did a little poking around and found my answer! Keyboard Shortcuts!
If you go into Settings, you can turn on Keyboard shortcuts. First, let’s look at how to do this and then I’ll share some of my favorite shortcuts.
So, that animation showed you our first 2 keyboard shortcuts:
– / brings up the search, all ready for you to find that special event you were looking for.
– ? brings up all of the keyboard shortcuts, for when you forget some of them (which you will).
Here are the other ones that I’ve added to my repertoire:
Add a Popup Message to your Google Docs
Ever wish that you could tell people something when they open up your Google Docs? Maybe “Make a copy of this document, answer the questions and share it with your teacher!” or “This is a draft!”
Well, it’s possible. Some simple coding in the script editor and you can make it happen. I know that some of you are thinking “Simple . . . . coding. . . !?” while making this face, but it’s true. Just follow the steps below and you’ll make it happen.
Before we jump into the how, or what it looks like, a few notes:
- Only Editors will be able to see the popup. In my testing, someone who is “can view” or “can comment” does not see the popup. Also, they have to be explicitly shared as editors, not just “anyone with the link can edit.”
- If you copy the document within your own account, the popup will appear on the copy as well.
- If someone shared on the document makes a copy, the popup will NOT appear on their copy.
- If you send the document out on Google Classroom as “Make a Copy for Each Student” it will NOT include the popup in those copies. I was bummed when I discovered this, because it would have been huge for teachers.
Now that you know those notes and limitations, let’s dive into it. First, an animated GIF of how to do it and then, below the GIF, the step by step with code that you can just copy and paste.
Step-by-Step Instructions:
- From within your Google Doc, click on Tools > Script Editor.
- Click on Untitled Project and rename the project.
- Replace the words myFunction with onOpen. (This is what tells it to run automatically)
- After the { type DocumentApp. (include the period)
- From the menu that pops up select getUi : Ui
- After {DocumentApp.getUi() type a period.
- From the menu that pops up select alert(String prompt) : Button
- In place of the word prompt type your popup message.
- Add quotation marks around your message (and inside of the parentheses).
- Click the save icon.
- Go back to your Doc, refresh and check it out!
Another note: You can actually edit the appearance of the popup with some HTML and CSS coding, but that would take me longer to explain that 1 GIF can handle!
Credits: I learned this from one of Google’s Applied Digital Skills Courses in the “Code Welcome Screen” Activity. You can learn about adding some formatting to your popup in that course.
Increase Font Size Incrementally
Darn. I thought I had that slide layout just right, but there’s a little extra space that I want to use. Maybe if I raise the text in the body to 15-point and the heading to 37-point. click, click, click, click, click… not quite. Maybe 16 and 38. click, click, click, click, click…
I wish there was an easier way . . . BAM! There is! I learned this tip in an episode of the Shukes & Giff Podcast (named for the hosts, Kim Pollishuke & Jen Giffen). Select the text box (or multiple textboxes 🤯) and press ⌘ + Shift + . and it’ll increase all of the text by 1-point. Just keep going until you get to the perfect size. Need to make it smaller? Replace that . with a , (by the way, I’m sure that they were selected because they’re > and <, but anyhow…). It’s a handy little trick to get your layout just right. (post continues below GIF)
And then I wondered . . . does this work in Docs!? Yup. Highlight the text and use the same keyboard shortcuts (double 🤯). (post continues below GIF)
Drawings!? Yup (triple 🤯). (post continues below GIF)
What about Sheets!? Nope. Sorry. Don’t push it.
SketchUp on Chromebooks!
When my friend Dave Ternent and I started teaching a middle school STEM course back in 2012, one of the first tools that we selected for the course was SketchUp.
SketchUp is a free 3D modeling computer program made by Trimble and, for a while, owned by Google. It was the perfect introduction to 3D-modeling, architecture and engineering for middle schoolers: powerful, but relatively easy to learn.
After seeing the awesome Matt England present at a local tech conference about his use of SketchUp with middle schoolers we even had information from someone who had used it about how to best introduce it. Matt was kind enough to share his resources during the session.
Based on Matt’s information, we had our students make shapes with certain dimensions as they learned to use it (see image). After that, they moved up to creating a 3-hole putt-putt (mini-golf) course that fit within a certain area (see image). They got very creative with those courses, which is great, but you could also extend this to tons of curriculum standards! Surface area, Roman architecture, volume, locations from literature, measurement, earthquake-resistant houses, perimeter, developing cities . . . I could go on and on. But I stopped using SketchUp. Why? It didn’t work on Chromebooks.
Until recently! SketchUp is now available on the web, which means that you can use it on Chromebooks! Check out the animated GIF below showing me using SketchUp. Imagine the possibilities for students!
(Note: this post previously linked to an “old” post from SketchUp for Schools. I updated the link to point to a newer post on 9.12.2020)
Translate in Google Sheets
Living in a new country where a different language is spoken is something that I can barely fathom. Doing it as a child just blows my mind. Our schools are often ill-equipped to support these kiddos, but they often do have one powerful tool that can help: compassionate teachers.
One of these compassionate teachers once came to me looking to create a tool to support an ELL (English Language Learner) student. We both knew that we worked with a great ELL Tutor who was helping this student assimilate to the school . . . but what about the vocabulary that was being learned in the meantime?
His idea was to organize important English vocabulary words and their translations to the student’s native language into a spreadsheet. After he came to me with this idea, I started exploring options. What I discovered was really exciting! There’s a Google Translate formula in Google Sheets!
Enter a word in one language in a cell, and then use the formula =GoogleTranslate(text, source_language, target_language) in another cell to automagically translate it! Translating one word this way doesn’t save my time, but you can drag (or double-click) the fill handle at the bottom of the formula cell to apply this formula to more than one cell.
This formula appears to work for all languages supported by Google Translate, of which there are more than 100! It even outputs the results with the correct letters and alphabet–not just our ABC English letters. You’ll just need to know the 2-letter code for the language, which you can find in this list.
A note: as with using the regular Google Translate site, the results are not 100% accurate, but they’re close. This method is free, fast, and easy. There may be other options that can yield better results.
Check out how to do it in the animation below and then read the steps below the EduGIF!
Tab-Level Edit Rights in Google Sheets
In Episode 50 of the Google Teacher Tribe Podcast, Bailee Sandsmark, a 6th-grade middle school PE teacher, asked a Google Sheets question that got my gears turning. All that gear turning inspired a new #EduGIF from me. First, let’s look at her question:
I’d like to send out a Sheets template to all 250 of my students for them to individually track their fitness testing data, but then I would like to have an efficient way for them to share that info with me so that I can see all of my students’ data in one sheet. Having to access 250 different sheets makes my head spin…
While Matt & Kasey had a handful of good ideas of their own, I had another one that I wanted to share. It came from a thought that Matt shared: it’d be nice to give each student a tab in one spreadsheet, but then each student could edit the others’ tabs. That’s where “tab-level permissions” comes into play. If you click on the tabs at the bottom of your Google Sheet, there’s a Protect Sheet option. It’s also accessible from under Tools. As you’ll see in the Animated GIF below, you can use this to give tab-level edit rights to specific students.
Before we get the GIF, a few notes:
- If each tab will be identical, you can duplicate the tabs.
- If you’d like to create a tab for each of your students, you can use Alice Keeler’s Template Tab add-on.
- You can also use this to give or limit edit access for just specific cells – I do this sometimes to make sure no one messes up formulas that I have running.
- In Bailee’s, situation, she’ll still have the issue that each student can see their classmate’s information (even though they can’t edit it). To prevent this, you could give them code names or numbers.
- The tabs that we’re referring to are technically called sheets, but I think that’s super confusing that the individual parts of Google Sheets are Sheets. What!?
And finally, the GIF:
SAMR ain’t *That* Simple
I’ve developed a new pet peeve recently. It’s handy-dandy graphics that tell you exactly which educational technologies match up with the different levels of the SAMR model (or Bloom’s or DoK, etc.). Are they handy? Yes. Are they dandy? Um, sure, I guess. Are they 100% accurate? Nope.
What gives? Why is Jake so down on these easy to follow graphics that conveniently tell us that ThingLink and Google Search are Substitution, while YouTube and Explain Everything are Redefinition? Because it ain’t that simple.
If you think that just by using YouTube, you’re at Redefinition, you should just hand in your teacher’s license now. Starbucks needs another barista. You’ll know exactly how to make drinks anyhow because you probably love this graphic too. Okay, okay, don’t quit teaching; just keep reading so I can help you. (BTW – apologies to the creator of that graphic. It’s not that bad, but it’s just not my cup of . . . coffee)
Seriously, one of the graphics I’ve seen says that Twitter is Substitution. And then, on the same graph, has Prezi as Redefinition. The creator of that one may have consumed too many PSL’s. What, praytell (I’ve always wanted to say praytell in a blog post), is the equivalent non-tech activity that using an engaging global social media tool (Twitter) is a substitution for!? And Prezi, the tool that’s essentially a slideshow with a side of vertigo is Redefinition!?
Listen, can Prezi have a key role in a fantastic, engaging, empowering learning experience? Certainly. Can it also be part of a trainwreck lesson? Of course! And the same can be said of Twitter.
So, how do we match technologies up with the levels of the SAMR model? Well, as I said before – It ain’t that simple. We have to look at the factors of these educational experiences that these handy-dandy graphics are ignoring:
- The students. What is the right tool for this group of students? What will engage and empower them?
- The standards. What are we trying to teach? Different technologies impact different learning standards in different ways.
- The pedagogy. The method and practice of teaching. It just can’t be boiled down to a handy-dandy chart.
In closing, these charts are wrong . . . sometimes. But they are also right . . . sometimes. What we need to realize is that good teachers are skilled, knowledgeable and talented in their craft and that they make difficult, informed decisions about what benefits their students. Stop trying to make graphics that make a skilled profession simple. Even the best educational technologies require rockstar teachers.
Customize the Numbers or Letters in a List in Google Docs
Educators use bulleted and numbered lists all of the time. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to customize those lists? Maybe instead of 1, 2, 3… you’d like Step 1, Step 2, Step 3… Well, you’re in luck. This is one of those features in Google Docs that many people may have never noticed was there. Right-click on a numbered list (or go to Formats > Bullets & Numbering > List Options) and you can modify the prefix and suffix of the numbers (or letters) in your list.
I can think of a few prefixes you may use – step, station, period, day, activity, option, choice, # – but I’d love to hear your ideas and uses! Finally, here’s an animated GIF of how it works:
Nupedia
Nupedia was a revolutionary idea. Ever heard of it? I didn’t think so; because I had never heard of it either. It was started by Jimmy Wales, who later started . . . Wikipedia. I bet you’ve heard of that one. So, what led to Jimmy’s switch from Nupedia to Wikipedia?
Well, it’s something that educators can learn a lot from. So listen up.
Jimmy started Nupedia, “the free encyclopedia”, in 2000. But, after a year, it only had 21 articles on it. Why, when there are now millions of articles on Wikipedia, were there so few on its predecessor after 1 year? According to Jimmy on this episode of the How I Built This Podcast, he made the decision to do something that all educators should take note of. He realized “I just need to go through this process myself to see what’s wrong with it or how can we [sic] improve it.” I’ll let you listen to the podcast to find out what he discovered, but for us educators, the important lesson is this:
That was really the moment when I said, ‘Okay, look this isn’t going to work. This isn’t fun’ . . . So that was a really crucial moment, the moment when I tried to get something through the system.
The lesson for educators? Always, always, try it out before asking your students to do it. If it feels tedious, boring, torturous or needlessly difficult to you, imagine how it will feel to a kid. Do you feel empowered when you try out your lesson or activity? Do you feel engaged when you complete that assignment?
You don’t necessarily need to take a full walkthrough of an activity – and if you differentiate well, it might not be possible for you to do a full trial run of every activity or assignment – but you should be putting yourself in the shoes of your students with everything that you ask them to do.
In the world of design, this is referred to as User Experience (UX) Design. Simply put, this means that when you create something (an app, a website, a device, a classroom activity) you focus on the experience that your user will have. Always, always, keep your students’ experience in mind when designing your instruction!