4 Great New Google Docs Templates for Teachers

November 21, 2015
A few months ago, we shared with you six popular Google Docs templates to use in your instruction but those were in the old template gallery. Now that the new Docs template gallery is released, there are way more practical templates to use for different educational purposes. We have spent sometime browsing through the collection there and picked out for you the ones below. These are especially helpful for  creating lesson plans, brochures, newsletters and resumes. To access and use any of these templates, go to Docs Gallery and click on 'More' on top right hand side

1- Lesson Plan
This is a great template to use for creating your lesson plans. It is pretty basic and features the basic elements making up a lesson plan. There are two versions of this template one is called Playful and the other Simple.

2- Brochure
This one allows you to create beautiful brochures without any technical hassle. You can use text, visuals, maps, shapes…etc to create a short 4 pages brochure to share with students. You can choose between two types of brochures: Modern Writer and Geometric.

3- Newsletter
Always under the Work section in Docs gallery, you will find three types of newsletter templates each one is slightly different from the other. There is the Geometric newsletter, the Lively newsletter and the Plum newsletter. They are all beautifully designed and can be appropriated for different purposes.

4- Resumes
There is a whole section in the new Docs gallery for resumes. There are actually four resume templates: Swiss, Serif, Coral and Spearmint.  Students can use them to create professional looking resumes in a matter of a few minutes.

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest 

3 Excellent Speech to Text Tools for Google Docs

November 1, 2015
In today’s post we are sharing with you three interesting ways students can use to voice type documents in Google Docs. Instead of using keyboard, students will be able to verbally dictate their text and see it transcribed live onto their document. While these speech recognition functionalities have a higher degree of accuracy but still post-editing is mandatory to correct errors related to unclear speech output. The first functionality in the list is a newly added feature to Google Docs called Voice Typing. The other two are third party apps to install on Docs.

1- Voice Typing
Voice Typing is  a built-in feature in Google Docs’ that allows you to  type with your voice. You can write an entire essay without having to touch the keyboard. You can even use punctuation with voice typing. There are several phrases you can choose from to punctuate your text (e.g ‘period’,’comma’, ‘exclamation mark’, ‘question mark’, ‘new line’, ‘new paragraph’. Voice tying for Google Docs is only available on computers using a Chrome browser. To start using Voice typing, you need to have a working microphone then open a document in your Chrome browser and click on Tools and select Voice typing as shown in the screenshot below.

Watch the video below to learn more about how to use Voice Typing in Google Docs

2- Speech Recognition
'The Speech Recognition add-on will allow you to use speech recognition to write your Google Docs documents. Express yourself as you've never done. Be free from the keyboard and faster than ever. This add-on uses the Google Web Speech Api giving a high level of assertiveness. And now with punctuation marks.'
3- Voice Recognition
'You can use Google Chrome as a voice recognition app and type long documents, emails and school essays without touching the keyboard. The app is integrated with Dropbox and Google Drive to help you easily export you transcribed text to your various online accounts. Alternatively, your can send the dictated text to any email address'. Watch the video below to learn more about how to use Voice Recognition.

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest 

4 Great Google Docs Add-ons to Help Students with Their Writing

October 13, 2015
Today we spent sometime going through Google Docs add-ons store and selected for you the titles below. These are particularly ideal for helping students with their writing from spell checking to providing feedback on writing assignments.  Also, some of these tools are freemium and offer pro versions with more advanced features.

1- Texthelp Study Skills

'Use Texthelp’s Highlighting Tools to highlight key areas of your document to collect, group, and learn from later. Simply select and highlight the desired text and click “Collect Highlights” to extract it and place it in a new document (by color or location) for students or educators to review.'

2- VeritySpell

'VeritySpell for Google Docs is an advanced spellchecker that corrects spelling and grammar mistakes in English texts. It is specially designed for people with reading and writing difficulties and dyslexia, but it is well suited for anyone who needs spelling assistance and language support.'

3- SAS Writing Reviser

‘This add-on provides students with feedback about their writing and enables them to address a range of potential writing problems, including weak verbs, excess prepositional phrases, dangling modifiers, and faulty sentence structure. By learning to ask questions experienced writers ask automatically, students begin to express themselves with greater precision and power.’

4- Revision Assistant 

'Revision Assistant is a free writing software for all looking to edit and revise writing. The software allows proofreading marks, reminiscent of the old school proofreading marks, to be inserted into the page. Proofreading marks are tracked by occurrence on the page. Proofreading marks are categorized into two types: Conventions (blue) and Structure (green). Omit, which is located in conventions category, is the only button to output red color.'

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest 

A New Google Docs Feature Ideal for Collaborative Writing in Class

September 5, 2015
One of the best features that mark Google Docs as a powerful collaborative writing platform is the ‘revision history’. Using ‘revision history’ allows you to see all the changes you or others working with you on the same document have made. All portions of text that have been added to the document are highlighted in a different colour. Omitted text is displayed with a strikethrough.

Two days ago, Google released a new collaborative feature called ‘See new changes’. As of right now, this feature works only on Docs and is not yet available for Spreadsheets and Presentations. This is particularly useful for co-writing documents. Now when working on a document with other collaborators, you will be able to see the changes added to the document as soon as you open it.

 When there are new changes to the doc a blue button reading ‘see new changes’ will be displayed next to the Help menu. You can also access this new feature by clicking on File and selecting ’See new changes’. As is the case with ‘revision history’,  added text is highlighted in a different colour and deleted text is marked with a strikethrough. To see the revision history while viewing the new changes, click 'See full history' in the top right.

Check out Google Docs Help page to learn more.

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest 

Google Released An Amazing Speech to Text Feature in Google Docs

September 4, 2015
Voice Typing is another interesting new feature Google released a few day ago. Google Docs’ users can now type with their voice. You can write an entire essay without having to touch the keyboard. You can even use punctuation with voice typing. There are several phrases you can choose from to punctuate your text (e.g ‘period’,’comma’, ‘exclamation mark’, ‘question mark’, ‘new line’, ‘new paragraph’.

Voice tying for Google Docs is only available on computers using a Chrome browser. To start using Voice typing, you need to have a working microphone then open a document in your Chrome browser and click on Tools and select Voice typing as shown in the screenshot below.

‘A pop-up microphone box will appear. When you are ready to speak your text, click the microphone or press Ctrl + Shift + S (Cmd + Shift + S on a Mac) on your keyboard.
Speak your text clearly, at a normal volume and pace. See below for more information on using punctuation. When you're finished, click the microphone again.’

Watch the video below to learn more about Voice typing

Check out Google Docs help page to learn more about Voice typing.

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest 

4 Teacher Tips on How to Manage Your Google Drive Apps

August 15, 2015
Google Drive apps are third party add-ons that enable you to do more with your Drive. Chrome web store is teeming with all kinds of apps to use with your Drive, our Educational  Drive Apps section features some of the best educationally relevant apps for teachers and educators.

The purpose of today’s post is to share with you four basic Drive tips related to the integration and use of third party apps on your Drive. You are probably already familiar with some of them  (especially tip 1 and 3) but we are assuming that you are new to Drive and you want to be able to correctly install and mange your apps. Here is  what you have to keep in your mind:

1-Install Google Drive Apps
To install apps compatible with your Drive:

• head over to Chrome Web Store and select the app you want to use.
• Click on ‘Add to Chrome’ or ‘Install’ button
• Grant authorization to the app to access your Google Drive

2-Make An App the Default for Supported File Types
Drive allows you to make any app you install a default app for its supported file types. For instance, ‘you install an app that allows you to create, save and edit a PNG or JPEG file. If you choose, you can open all PNG and JPEG files with that app by default.’ Here is how to do it:

• From the settings menu, select Manage apps.
• Check the box next to "Make [App Name] the default for files it can open."
• Click Done.

3-Uninstall Drive Apps
Uninstalling an app in your Drive will not delete any of your files for you can still access them right in your Drive. Here is how to uninstall an app:

• From the settings menu, select Manage apps.
• Find the app in the list and click the Options button.
• Select 'disconnect from Drive'.

4-Manage An App’s Access to Your Files
At any point in time, you can remove an applications' access to files in your Google Drive by revoking its access.

• Go to accounts.google.com.
• Select Authorizing applications & sites.
• Click Revoke access next to the app name.

Check out Google Drive Help centre for more tips and ideas on how to use Drive.

Follow us on :Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

The latest Google Drive Updates for Teachers

August 13, 2015
In the course of the last three to four months ago, Google has been releasing new updates to Google Drive almost on a weekly basis. So far we have covered all the ones directly related to us in education. Today, we are sharing with you the most recent updates released over the last few days:

1- Include hidden and filtered data in charts in Google Sheets

‘ This launch introduces the option to include hidden and/or filtered data in Sheets charts. Going forward, if you create a chart in Sheets on the web and then filter or hide any of the source data, a small message will appear indicating that the data has been removed from your chart and giving you the option to include it. While this option will only appear on the web, any settings will be respected on mobile as well.’

2- Change font size of texts in Google Docs

‘This launch will allow users to more easily increase or decrease the relative font size of text in Google Docs and Slides…if a user highlights a range of text or any number of textboxes in Google Docs or Slides, he or she can increase or decrease that selection’s font size in 1-pt increments by choosing Format > Font size > Increase font size or decrease font size from the menu bar. If the selected text contains multiple font sizes, each will be increased or decreased accordingly.’

3- Docs notifications
With this new update when files Google docs are transferred to a new owner, ‘the new document, spreadsheet, and presentation owners will receive all notifications for any comments added to their files, and previous owners, like any other collaborators, will only receive notifications if their names are explicitly added to a comment.’

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

The 6 Most Popular Google Docs Templates for Teachers

July 23, 2015
In today’s post we are sharing with you a set of handy document templates created and provided for free download by the folks in Google Docs. These are the six most popular and most downloaded templates in Google Docs Template Gallery (in Students & Teachers category). As a teacher, you can re-appropriate the content of the docs to suit your teaching purposes.

These ready-made document templates are particularly useful for teachers to use in class to enhance their teaching workflow and boost their productivity. The templates span different topics and can be utilized for various purposes including: writing student reports, grading essays, taking notes in class, creating lesson plans and more.

Before you download any of these templates, make sure you check it in preview mode to see if it works for you. Enjoy

1- Student Report

2- Class Notes

3- Essay Grading Rubric

4- Syllabus: Basic

5- Syllabus: Simple

6- Lesson Plan: Basic

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

The 7 Popular Google Docs Tools for Teachers

June 15, 2015
Below is a list of some popular Google Docs add-ons for teachers and educators. These extensions are geared towards enhancing your Google Docs productivity by enabling you to perform a wide range of functionalities that Docs alone would not be able to afford.  Some of the things you can do with these add-ons include: create bibliographies and automatically format citations in different citation styles, integrate various accents into your docs, create and insert mind maps into your documents, add digital signatures to your docs, create math graphs, generate tag clouds, and draw diagrams.


1- EasyBib Bibliography Creator

'EasyBib allows you to easily create a bibliography for your research paper. Automatically cite books, journal articles, and websites just by entering in the titles or URLs. Format citations in MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, and over 7K other styles.'

2- Easy Accent

'This Add-on allows users to easily insert accents for different languages directly from a sidebar in their Google Doc.When you click on an accent it will insert the accent,move the cursor in front, then allow you to continue typing without re-clicking.'

3- MindMeister

'The MindMeister add-on for Google Docs turns any bullet-point list into a mind map, and automatically inserts it into your document. The first point of your list becomes the root topic of the mind map, while the rest of the first-level points are turned into first-level topics. Second-level points are turned into the equivalent second-level topics and so on.'

4- HelloSign

'HelloSign makes it easy to sign your Google Doc with a legally binding, business-caliber signature.Need to get your document signed? HelloSign makes requesting a signature from others easy too!'

5- Tag Cloud Generator

'Tag Cloud Generator creates a tag cloud in the side bar from any Google Docs document that contains 50 words or more. Use this add-on to quickly assess what your emerging theme is, how to best categorize your document, or if it is someone's else's document - find out the theme of the document without reading it. '

6- Lucidchart Diagrams

'Lucidchart is an HTML5-based visual collaboration tool that makes drawing diagrams fast and easy.  Work together with an unlimited number of others to create and edit diagrams in real time, with changes merged and synced instantaneously -- great for team collaboration and working with clients. '

7- g(Math)

'Create graphs and complex math directly from the sidebar in your Google Doc. You can now use Speech to Math in Chrome to talk directly to g(Math) to create the expressions or use Handwriting recognition for expression entry!'

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .