GSuite – Jake Miller

Filtering by Color in Google Sheets

Sometimes when I’m working on a project in Google Sheets, I shade cells a certain color to visually organize them. I’ve always wished that there was a way to just see the green ones. Or the red ones. Or the yellow ones. Sure, I could add some kind of indicator in a separate cell that I can filter by, but I wished that I could just do it by color.

Well, now I can! Recently, Google added the ability to filter and sort based on the cell color and the font color. Check out how it works with filtering in the EduGIF below! The step-by-step instructions are underneath the EduGIF.

This animated GIF shows the process by which cells in Google Sheets can be filtered by color. Step-by-step instructions are included in the blog post. — See the pausable version of this EduGIF here.

Before I share the step-by-step instructions, one last note. In the EduGIF, I did not share the process of sorting by color. When sorting by color, you’re selecting the color group (red, green, or white, in my GIF) that will come first. The other colors are then grouped after that. Within the color groups, the values will also be sorted in the default format (largest number to smallest number, in my data set). Continue reading Filtering by Color in Google Sheets

Slides Timer Extension

Two and a half years ago, I made an #EduGIF about adding timers to Google Slides using YouTube Videos and posted it on my site. Well, it’s time to introduce a new option.

Clay Smith is an educator in New York City. He’s also a talented coder. And that coding talent extends to gSuite Add-Ons and Chrome Extensions. The newest in his repertoire of projects is Slides Timer, an extension that makes certain text placeholders in Google Slides text boxes come to life as timers when in present mode.

As Clay’s site explains, the extension accepts 3 different placeholders:

<<5:00->> will count down starting at 5 minutes.

<<2:00+>> will count up starting at 2 minutes

<<time>> will display the current time in AMPM format

Judging by the feedback form on Clay’s site, I’ll guess that this extension is still a work in progress. There are a few things that I’d change, if I could, but it’s already an awesome option as it is!

Check it out in the #EduGIF below!

Animation shows the use of Clay's Slides Timer Extension in action. — Pausable version of this #EduGIF available here: youtube.com/watch?v=16iqS5cWVZ0

Adding Audio to Play on a Set of Google Slides

Not long ago, Google finally added the functionality of adding audio to Google Slides for all users. And, not long thereafter, we started asking for improvements! 😬 Hey, it’s what we do! 😃

In this post, I’m going to share with you a hack to get the most asked for improvement. It’s not an elegant hack (that’s an oxymoron, I think) but it’ll do until Google adds the actual functionality.

When you add audio, the main choice that you’ll have to make is
– “Do I want this to stop playing when I advance to the next slide…
– or do I want it to continue until the audio ends…
– or do I want it to loop until the end of the slideshow?”
Unfortunately, there’s no option to have it play on Slides 1, 2, 3 and 4 and then stop on Slide 5.

But what if that’s what we want? In this post, I’ll show you a hack to set your audio to play for a subset of slides, but not for others.

My first idea for a hack was adding a different piece of audio on Slide 5, but that just leads to both audio files playing simultaneously. Back to the drawing board.

My second idea worked. So, here it is… #EduGIF first, step-by-step instructions next.

This animation shows how to add audio for only a subset of the slides in a Google Slides file. The steps are typed out below the image.

Continue reading Adding Audio to Play on a Set of Google Slides

Searching for Images with Transparent Backgrounds in Google Image Search

There are lots of reasons that you might need images with transparent backgrounds! Maybe it’s for a #StopMotionSlides project! Maybe it’s for a graphic design project! Maybe it’s for a green screen video or image!

No matter what your reason is for wanting an image with a transparent background, the easiest option is the same: do a Google Image Search for images with a transparent background!

There are ways to take images and remove their background, but if we can start with no background, that’s even better!

Search in Google > Images > Tools > Color > Transparent

Note: Unfortunately, this is not a perfect process. Using this strategy misses some images with transparent backgrounds and includes some images that it should have left out.

Check out the #EduGIF below. A Pausable #EduGIF is available here.

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

Quickly Assigning Due Dates for Google Tasks in Google Calendar

***In order for this process to work, you have to make sure the Tasks checkbox on the left is checked.***

Not too long ago, us Google-fans celebrated the arrival of the sidebar that we see alongside most gSuite apps. That sidebar, which features access to Google Calendar, Keep & Tasks, made things much more convenient for users. But, one thing that wasn’t convenient was how we assigned due dates & times to items in Google Tasks. click. click. click. click. click. Count ’em… 5 clicks for each task!

And this frustrated me, because I had just recently adopted Google Tasks as my to-do list management strategy. I love how I can see them across all of my devices. But, what to do about all of those clicks? Well, I’ve got ya…

Open up the Tasks sidebar while in Google Calendar and navigate to the date and/or time that you want a task to be due on. Then, just drag the task onto the date and/or time that you’d like to it to be due and… BAM! How many clicks was that? 1 click. 1 drag. Done.

BTW – don’t see tasks? I’ve seen 2 possible reasons for that. Here they are:
1. You have Reminders enabled instead of Tasks. Click the small menu to the right of Reminders (should be in the LEFT sidebar) and then choose Switch to Tasks.
2. You have multiple Google Accounts logged in within the same Chrome window. Check this post from Kasey Bell or this post from Eric Curts to resolve that.

A Google Slides Hack to Replace ChatterPix or Blabberize

This idea–a true moment of educational duct tape (using technology to solve a classroom problem or goal)–actually came to me while recording an episode of my Educational Duct Tape Podcast!

In Episode 5, I played a question that Linda Hummer shared to the Educational Duct Tape Community FlipGrid along with Abbey Thomas’ answer. Linda’s question was, essentially, what is an alternative to Chatterpix that works on Chromebooks? Abbey’s answer was Blabberize. And the question was answered! Or, so I thought…

After the episode aired, Dan Gallagher shared on that same grid some words of caution: Blabberize’s Terms of Service indicate that it’s not appropriate for all ages. So, in Episode 6, I shared this and then, on the spot, found a hack for a solution:

I’ve posted about #StopMotionSlides a number of times (here are my tips for making them) and they make a pretty good solution for this. Put a picture into a slide, use some careful cropping and then leverage a stop motion technique. Not only can you make the mouth move up and down, but you can then publish the animation (#13 in these tips) and then record them with Screencastify (or your screencasting tool of choice) with a voiceover (#14 in these tips)!

Voila! Not as easy as Chatterpix, but at least it eliminates the need of adding another tool and another set of terms of service to what you use with your students: you likely already use Google Slides & Screencastify!

Plus, unlike ChatterPix or Blabberize, you can have multiple characters, your characters can move, the scene change… You–and your students–can get super creative!

Here’s an animated GIF of the process, followed by a step-by-step breakdown.

Google Slides ChatterPix Blabberize Hack Animation

Continue reading A Google Slides Hack to Replace ChatterPix or Blabberize

Add your Google Drawings into your Google Docs!

On 1/7/19, Google announced that you could now embed previously created Google Drawings into Google Docs. Before this announcement, you could create new Drawings from within a Doc, but you could not pull in Drawings created in the regular Drawings platform.

This was limiting, because the Drawings tool within Docs was only provided a small workspace and had less tools. It was also frustrating that a Drawing couldn’t be in both places – a Drawing and Doc – without copying and pasting or using the following workaround.

Up to this point, the best workaround was to download the Drawing as an image and then insert that image into the Doc. This was frustrating for a few reasons: it involved inconvenient extra steps and it meant that the Drawing in the Doc would not update if the actual Drawing was updated.

Well, now Google has made good on fixing this. In the Google Docs Insert menu, go to Drawing and now you can select New to create a new one or From Drive to select one that you created in the Google Drawings platform. When the drawing is changed in Drawings, you’ll see an Update option in the Doc to show the changes (unless you selected Unlink when you added the Drawing). Check it out in the animated GIF below:

Embed Drawings into Docs GIF