Google Docs Comments

Teachers and students will love their ability to comment on their work and the work of their classmates.  When you have "edit" or "comment" access to a document, you can easily add a comment (like a post-it note) right on the document.  All you have to do is select some text and click the comment button at the top of the page.

You will be able to type a note to the owner.  Then your comment will show up and an email will be sent to the owner of the document.

The owner will then be able to go into the document and resolve the suggestion.  Also, take notice that you can +emailaddress another person to add them to the conversation.  When you + someone, they will get an email, and you will be prompted to alter the share settings for that person.  You could add them as an editor, commenter, or just allow them to reply to the comment.  Interesting possibilities there.

Comments will be an excellent way for teachers to help students edit their work, without having to edit the work for the student.  Make suggestions, provide hints, or even create a class code for editing tips.  Give comments a try.

Google Forms has Customizable Banners and New Banner Choices

Google Forms has been going through some serious upgrades.  I've been posting about them for weeks.  One upgrade I really like is the ability to add your own custom banners to the top of your Google Forms.  I would suggest creating one for all of your Forms.  That way, your students or colleagues will recognize it as yours.  You can even create a little logo to use with it.  Here is one that we created for our future surveys.  It is a graphic that is 500 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall.

You can add your banner by going into the "Change Theme" button.  Then looking at the theme list and noticing you can now customize themes.  Click "customize".  Then open the "Header Image" area and click "Choose Image".  You can then upload your own banner.

You may also notice that there are a lot of new banner choices that Google has provided.  They are even arranged in topics.  Some cool seasonal ones are available for your Form use.

These upgrades should make data collection fun and interesting.  Give them a try!

Office files Converted with New Google Drive

There are times when you may want to upload and convert one of your current Office files so that you can share or work with colleagues on the document.  You can upload and convert Office files directly into Google format so that you can share and collaborate or even publish.  Below is a tutorial on how you can upload those files in the New version of Google Drive.  Here is a link to a version for the Old Google Drive.

Google will upload and convert Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.




Google will also convert so that you can download files back out of Google into other formats.  That way you can send to people who need a specific format or don't have a Google Account (Boo!)

Give this a try!