Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:08 AM
(Cross-posted on the Google students blog)The Google Docs team is getting ready for back to school. We've been doing our homework this summer to make your school year go a little smoother. Today we're launching a handful of features that will benefit both students and teachers. Speaking from experience, as students ourselves, we know that these features will come in handy on any given day. Check out the schedule below to see how.
| Time | Schedule |
| 9:00am | Spanish Literature [Bldg200-253] |
| | Writing essays about Gabriel García Márquez is hard enough in English; try it in Spanish. At least now I can make sure I'm on the right track by defining and translating Spanish words. Like any research essay, I have to double space the document and cite my sources. I use footnotes to cite sources. They are automatically numbered so I don't have to keep track of them and they sit in the margins for easy reference. As of today, I can even print footnotes as endnotes, consolidated on separate pages at the end of my document. |
| 10:00am | Gym break |
| | I keep track of my daily workout progress using a variety of Docs templates. Today I'll be using the Runner's Log: |
| 11:00am | Hiking Club [Student Union] |
| | The other club officers and I make sure that we cover all important topics by collaborating on an agenda outline before each weekly meeting. As the secretary, I also take notes on the outline so I like being able to customize how the list is formatted. The officers also work together to make sure our website is up to date. With Google Sites we can each edit the site when necessary without learning html. My favorite feature is the ability to embed maps, documents, and calendars directly into a page. |
| 12:00pm | Lunch |
| | I keep up to date on the go by viewing and editing my docs on a mobile phone. |
| 1:00pm | Probabilistic Systems Analysis Lecture [Bldg32-123] |
| | This class moves pretty fast. My friends and I sit near each other and take notes on a single Google Doc to make sure we don't miss a thing. With the new equation editor feature, it's much easier to read and understand each others' equation notations. And whenever I walk into class a little late, I can just do a revision comparison of our shared notes document to see exactly what I've missed. |
| 2:00pm | Solid State Chemistry Tutorial [Bldg5-320] |
| | In order to lead this tutorial, I often put together some slides beforehand and share them with my students. Now that Google Docs Presentations supports subscripts and superscripts, it's even easier to make and edit these slides. |
Want to try out these features in your routine? Find some more detailed information about the features here.
12 comments:
I keep seeing examples (from Google anyway of using the blackboard template for a presentation... and I even tried such a thing myself as an idea for a web page, but...
The examples use Comic Sans as a font, and I don't see Comic Sans when I am in the presentation ap on Google aps. I *DO* see it in the document ap.
I ended up using an offline application and an even more handwriting-like font, coupled with transparency to overlay a PICTURE of the writing onto the blackboard background. But this is a lot of bother, and quite wasteful of resources.
There should be a better way, and while we are at it a larger, more consistent set of fonts across Google aps.
I love Google Docs but I do not like that they are requiring some of the new users verify their account via SMS text message and not email. My students are totally against this and will not provide their mobile number, so we went with another online office provider. Also, the stupid (yes I said it) part is that it only works for some carriers and not everyone has mobiles. Google Docs team, please change this.
This has to be the singularly most entertaining and informational blog entry I've read in years. Excellent work!
I'm a teacher. My students and I love docs, but this fall I am very disapointed by two changes. 1. I really miss the "items not in folders" option on my docs list. Without being able to file and put away the masses of docs my students share with me it gets much harder to find things. 2. When a doc gets published that is no longer indicated by the word "published" on the docs list. My students publish when they 'finish' a doc and the publish tag on the docs list was a way for me to see easily who was finished.
As an instructor in an institution that will be rolling out Apps in just a few weeks, I wanted to applaud your post as a good, tangible example I can show other faculty and students to demonstrate why Apps will be so helpful to our students. I especially liked the use of Google Docs to create a group note taking document...Nice touch!
I agree withe Sheldon's and Mrs. R's comments. As a high school special education teacher where cell phones are banned, the SMS verification option will greatly limit our ablity to use Google Docs, so I am looking for an another option. My district will not adopt GoogleApps for education so that is not an option. I should also note that most of my students don't have cell phones with texting plans because they can only afford prepaid phones. Poor students who do not have computers and internet access at home cannot use Google Docs if they have to use SMS verification. I used my cell to verify some accounts but I was limited to 5 verifications. Please change this practice. Mrs. R's comments about those missing features are also accurate. I too miss those options.
I recently helped my middle school students register for google docs. Some needed to confirm via cell phone, some didn't. We used my cell phone # until google wouldn't accept it anymore, and then a student volunteered her phone for the rest--although our students aren't supposed to have cell phones in the classroom.
I see google docs as a great collaborative tool, but the needing a cell phone # to activate the account wil make it unusable in a lot of educational situations.
If you are going to add support for citations at least add support for integrating with Zotero.
Do you think that the Google Docs team could look into integrating a mind mapping tool like mindmeister into your office productivity pack you have going? I think many people would find it useful
On what mobile phone can I edit my docs? I think I can only view on my iphone, right?
Strongly agree with others about the problems of SMS verification. Google docs has been a great resource for our students who don't have computers at home or can't afford pricey software. Those are the same students who may not have mobile phones, unlimited texting, etc. This change has cut them out completely. Nevermind the problem of using phones to verify accounts during the school day. I appreciate the spam issue, but there has to be another way that doesn't discriminate against students who already run into constant roadblocks. :(
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