Drive – Jake Miller

4 Tips for Assessing Growth in Student Writing in Google Docs

It’s safe to say that most educators agree that feedback should be given to students not just at the end of an assignment, but also during. Many educators would even say that the “during” feedback is more important, especially in writing. But, how do we do that efficiently? Reading & assessing student work twice takes up lots of time.

Well, I have 4 tips that I think can help.

By comparing a rough draft (or earlier draft) to the final draft (or most current draft), the teacher can assess the changes being made and decide if additional changes are necessary. It’s also a great way for teachers to see what areas for improvement students are and are not catching.

Google Docs offers some great functions for doing this. In this post, I’ll share 3 tips with you to help with this process.

Continue reading 4 Tips for Assessing Growth in Student Writing in Google Docs

Graphic Design Tools in Google Slides: Align, Distribute & Center

On the Google Teacher Tribe podcast (one of my favorite podcasts) Kasey Bell & Matt Miller often refer to Google Slides as the “Swiss Army Knife of gSuite.” And I agree! There are so many things that you can do in Google Slides. In this post, I’m going to show you 3 super useful Graphic Design tools that are available in Slides.

Align – When you select 2+ objects (images, shapes, text boxes, etc.) you can align them horizontally (left, right or center) or vertically (top, bottom or center) with each other!

Distribute – When you select 3+ objects (images, shapes, text boxes, etc.) you can distribute them horizontally or vertically in relation to each other. This spaces the objects out evenly. It’s important to note that it’s based off of the positions of the leftmost and rightmost objects. So, get your left and right objects into place and then use this tool to distribute everything else out evenly in between.

Center on Page – This tool does exactly what you’d expect it to, but with one nice bonus – if you have multiple objects selected it will center them as a group. So, the objects themselves may not be in the center of the slide, but they will be arranged with the center of the group at the center of the slide.

A note for the Google Drawings fans out there: each of these items are also available there and work in the same manner.

Check out the EduGIF of these 3 tools in action below and, if it moves too fast, check out the Pausable EduGIF here.

Making Silhouettes in Google Slides

Adjacent Possible. Have you heard of it? If you listen to the Educational Duct Tape Podcast, you probably have. It’s this theory that a new set of possibilities is enabled by taking one step beyond the current state of things. Every step opens up new possibilities, just like every conversation with a person can lead to new possibilities that you had not considered.

Well, I had an Adjacent Possible experience a few days ago while interviewing Tony Vincent for Episode 26 of the Educational Duct Tape podcast. Tony was responding to a question about how to help students get to know each other. He shared with me about this activity that he had done where his students took side profile pictures of themselves and then turned them into silhouettes of in Google Slides. They then added in images and words that showed their interests. The students presented their slides to their classmates and, later, those same slides were played on a loop on a screen in the room. What I love about this activity is that, on the surface, it’s a great “getting to know each other” activity. But, underneath that, it’s also a fantastic way to teacher kids some new skills with a tool that the teacher planned on using in class.

This is actually an activity that Tony teaches participants in his fantastic Classy Graphics course. If you’re interested in learning Graphic Design with Google Tools, you should check it out!

There are certainly ways to make these silhouettes that would be easier. But that’s not the point. The point is, opening students’ eyes to the possibilities within the tools that they have access to. As Tony shared in the episode, his students became highly capable at using Slides to create all sorts of things. I don’t know about you, but I’m not surprised. By doing this activity, his students saw slides as more than just a tool for presentations. They saw it as a creation space.

Well, as you have probably already guessed, I was compelled to turn this into an #EduGIF, so here it is. After the GIF, I’ll share step-by-step instructions for making these. By the way, I’d be honored if you used this GIF and these instructions with your own students in class. You can repay me by showing me some of their creations!

Continue reading Making Silhouettes in Google Slides

Keyboard Shortcuts for Bullets & Numbering

Sometimes, I think a trick, hack or shortcut that I do with technology is unimpressive and something that everyone either knows or doesn’t care about. But then, when I mention it to someone, and they’re like “Whoa!” I think “Welp, this should be an EduGIF.”

Recently, I had the good fortune to be recording a guest appearance on the Shukes & Giff Podcast (er, maybe it’s the Shukes & Jake Podcast, now!? Kidding!). When I was chatting about Emoji Bullets with Kim Pollishuke (a.k.a. “Shukes”), I mentioned, “So, I’ll just click Shift+Command+8 and then…” and she said “Wait, What!?” And then I knew it, EduGIF time. So here it is . . .

in most Google Tools:

Click CTRL (Command on Mac) + Shift + 7 for Numbering
Click it again to undo numbering
Click CTRL (Command on Mac) + Shift + 8 for Bullets
Click it again to undo bullets

Here’s the EduGIF!

Shortcuts for Bullets and Numbering GIF

Font Formatting in Google Comments

Did you ever really, really, really want a student (or colleague) to understand your feedback on a portion of a Google Doc? Well, my friend, I have got news for you. Surround a word (or group of words) in a Google Docs (or Slides, Sheets, Drawings…) Comment with asterisks (*) and you’ve got bold text. 💥Boom💥 Surround them with underscores ( _ ) and you’ve got italicized text. 💥Boom💥

🤔❓Why does using the underscore lead to italicized text instead of underlined text!? I have no idea. Ask the Googs.❓🤔

Even more puzzling, there’s no option to create underlined text. But hey, 3 minutes ago, you didn’t know about how to do bold or italics, so calm it down, buddy.

Here’s the real head-scratcher: some people seem to want strikethrough text in a comment. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Why? I dunno. But it’s possible. Just surround your text with hyphens (-) and you’ve got strikethrough. Medium-half-excited-don’t-know-why-anyone-wants-this-feature-💥Boom💥. But again, 4 minutes ago, you were clueless that this was even within the realm of possibility, so turn your snark dial down, Francis. Anyhow, here’s a GIF. Please enjoy.

Using Answer Tables in Google Docs

A few weeks ago, I posted a little hack that I like to use for making student answers in Google Docs easier to find. You can see that post here. Multiple people reminded me of a practice that many elementary educators love using:

Instead of just pre-formatting the answer space, actually create an answer table. This makes it less likely that students accidentally mess up the pre-existing content in the doc and makes their answers easier to find. This is a great practice when assigning these Docs as Make a Copy for Each Student in Google Classroom.

There are 3 different ways to do this. I’ll show each in the GIF below and then go over them in some additional detail below the GIF.

More details on what you see in the GIF below . . . Continue reading Using Answer Tables in Google Docs

Google Drawings in Google Classroom

A few weeks ago, I shared a post about putting Drawings in Google Docs that are assigned in Google Classroom. After seeing some of the reactions, I realized that some educators either weren’t aware of the powers of Google Drawings or had never thought of using them in assignments with Google Classroom. I was all “whaaaaat!?” So, now I’m here to dial it back a notch… Let’s talk about assigning Google Drawings (not Drawings in Docs, just Drawings) in Google Classroom. First up: an animated GIF for your viewing pleasure; and then: a quick step-by-step of how to use Drawings in Classroom.

Continue reading Google Drawings in Google Classroom

Saving Images from Google Docs

When edtech rockstar Matt Miller says “Hey Jake, you should make this into an #EduGIF!” you listen. He was right, too. It was an awesome tip.

It was a pickle that I had been in before, but I had never known the solution. You’re preparing something–a lesson, a blog post, whatever–and you need a picture. Not just any picture, but a picture that you’ve used before. It’s in that one Google Doc, but you can’t get to the picture from anywhere else. So, you right-click on it in that Google Doc . . . but there’s no Save Image option.

There are a handful of ways that you can get that image saved as a file on your computer, but the one that Matt sent to me is pretty awesome. It’s just a few steps and super easy. And it’s even more convenient if you have multiple images that you need from the same Google Doc. So, let’s get to it – first an animated #EduGIF and then the steps for those of you who like to read words.

Open the Google Doc
Select File > Download As > Web Page (.html, zipped)
Locate the saved file on your computer
Unzip the file (on my Mac, all that I have to do is double-click)
A new folder should have been created. Inside of that folder will be all of the images that are in that Google Doc. Feel free to move your image out of there and delete the other files as well as the zipped file.

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.

Google Drive Folder Basics

Organization can help relieve stress. One great way to organize in Google Drive is to create and utilize folders. Here are the basics . . .

Creating folders:

Folders can be created by selecting New > New Folder
Folders can also be created in some locations by right-clicking & selecting New Folder
Folders can be nested (folders inside of folders)
Folders can be color-coded (pretty!)

Putting Content into Folders:

Drag & Drop
Use the Move To button in the top toolbar
Use the Move To button in the right-click options
Hold down shift to highlight more than 1 file and then move them together

Put Files in More than One Location

Check out this post to see how you can have your Google Drive files in more than one folder.