Google Drawings: More Useful Than You Think

You've probably heard of Google Drawings, but have you taken a few moments to play with it?  If you haven't taken the time to explore it, try it out.  I promise you'll be impressed.

To start a new drawing, open up your Google Drive and click on the red "New" button.  Then choose "More" and click on "Google Drawings" in the list.  You can also just browse to drawings.google.com.

When it first opens, you will be presented with a blank drawing canvas.  Here is what it looks like.  I've given you some notes about what you see.

A few tips:

• Resize your canvas - If you want to do a more specific resize of your canvas, click on "File" and choose "Page setup" from the menu.  It will pop up a box for you to choose your setting. 

• Make hyperlinks - When you insert shapes and text, you can hyperlink those items so that they become clickable links.  Simply select the item and you will see more options pop into the toolbar.  Click on the chain link icon and you can paste in the URL you wish to link to.  Keep in mind these items won't be hyperlinks if you download as an image, but they will if you download as a .pdf or leave it as a drawings file.

• Use the grey workspace - The whole grey area around your canvas is usable space.  You can put text, shapes, images, and lines in the grey space to clear out your canvas while you work.  Just drag items over and leave them there until you need them.  If you download your drawing as an image, only the items on the canvas will be shown.  When you save and share as a Google drawing file, everything in the grey space saves, too.  The neat thing about this is that you can create a drawing with items on the side and share it with your students.  Then they can use the items you provided to complete an assignment without cluttering up the canvas.  

• Download your image - You can download your creation for use in many different ways.  Click "File" and choose "Download as" from the menu.  You can choose to download as a .pdf, .svg, .png, or a .jpg.   

• Keep proportions - If you hold down the shift key while you are making a shape, it will keep the shape proportional.  A square will stay a square instead of stretching into a rectangle.  A circle will stay a circle and not change to an oval.  A line will snap to certain angles.  It is handy to use with lines when you want them to stay straight horizontal or vertical.  It will also take a shape you already made and keep it's proportions if you need to resize it.  Comes in very handy if you ask me.  

Go ahead, try it out.  You won't regret it.  Google Drawings is perfect for using in the classroom and the possibilities are endless.

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Gmail: Using the Star

That little star next to your emails in the inbox can be a useful tool.  It can remind you of things to follow up on.  It can also help you mark emails you don't want to lose track of.  With a little tweak to your settings, it can help you do a whole lot more.

The basic way to use the star to mark an email is to just click on the star.  That will make it turn yellow.

 Now when you click on the "Starred" section in the navigation down the left of your inbox screen, you will see all of the emails you have starred.  ​

To remove a star from an email, simply click the star icon again.  There are a few more options available for stars if you go into your settings.  Click on the gear icon at the top right of your inbox and choose "Settings".

​Now scroll down until you see the section for "Stars".

You can see that you have quite a few more options.  Chances are you have just one star in use.  If you click on the "4 stars" preset, it will look like this:

​You can also choose to use "all stars" or simply click on the ones you'd like to use and drag them into the "in use" section.

Once you decide what you'd like, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save changes".  If you chose to have more than one star, you can now click the little star icon for an email and it will be the yellow star, but if you click it again it will change and each click allows you to "scroll" through the star icons you have in play.  Once you set the icon and click away to something else, when you click the icon again it will remove the star from the email.

Stars can be a great way to add a layer of organization to your inbox.

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Gmail Inbox: Change The Spacing

Did you know you could change the spacing on your Gmail inbox?

You have three choices:

Comfortable - a good amount of space between emails
Cozy - in the middle
Compact - emails are tight together so you can see more on the page

You can change it with one easy step.

Click on the little gear icon on the upper right hand corner of your inbox and you will see all three options.  Click on the one you want.  I put all three options below so you can see the difference.  The default is comfortable, so you are probably already set to that one.

Comfortable

Cozy

Compact

You can pick whatever works best for your vision and your productivity.

Some Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts

I love keyboard shortcuts.  I wanted to share some of my favorites with you.  Some you might know, some you may not.  There are so many more, but these are the ones I use the most.  They are all listed for PC.  Unless otherwise noted, for a Mac - just replace Ctrl with Command.  (Select all would be Command-A instead of Ctrl-A)

Word Processing
Ctrl-A = select all
Ctrl-L = left align (ctrl-shift-L in Google Docs)
Ctrl-R = right align (ctrl-shift-R in Google Docs)
Ctrl-E = center (ctrl-shift-E in Google Docs)
Ctrl-C = copy
Ctrl-V = paste
Ctrl-Shift-V = paste using destination formatting - see post to explain.
Ctrl-X = cut
Ctrl-B = bold
Ctrl-I = italics
Ctrl-U = underline

Just for Google Docs
Ctrl-Alt-M = Make a comment (see post)  (Command-Option-M on Mac)

Just for Microsoft Word
Ctrl-1 = single space
Ctrl-2 = double space
Ctrl-5 = 1.5 space

Google Chrome
Ctrl-F = opens a search bar to find words on a webpage or Google Doc (see post)
Ctrl-Shift-D = save all your open tabs in a bookmark folder (see post)
Ctrl-Shift-B = toggles your bookmarks bar on and off

To Navigate - (see post about all of these)
Ctrl-Shift-T = opens the last tab you closed
Ctrl-T = open a new tab
Ctrl-W = close the active tab (the one you actively looking at)
Ctrl-Tab = switch to next tab to the right (same on Mac)
Ctrl-Shift-Tab = switch to the next tab to the left (same on Mac)
Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-8 = switch to that number tab
Ctrl-9 = takes you to the last tab you have open
Press Ctrl while you click on a link = open the link in a new tab
Press Ctrl-Shift while you click on a link = open the link in a new tab and take you to that tab

Enjoy!  Stop in again soon for more handy tips!

Google Drive Template Gallery

As busy educators, we have learn to work smarter.  When we can use something that is already made and tweak it to be what we need, it saves valuable time.  You probably know that Microsoft Office has pre-made templates for nearly anything you can imagine - calendars, flyers, newsletters, business letters, fax cover sheets, PowerPoint presentations, etc.  Did you know Google has a template gallery also?

To connect this handy gallery to your Google Drive, follow these easy steps: 

1. From your Drive, click on the red "New" button, go down to "More" and choose "Connect more apps".

2.  Search for "Drive Template Gallery" and you will see it come up in the results.  Click the blue "Connect" button.

3.  It will connect to your Drive and then give you a little confirmation window.  You can leave that checkbox marked and then click "ok". 

Done!  Now you can go back to your Drive and click the red "New" button, go to "More" and then choose "From template".  The first time you do this it will probably ask permission for the template gallery to know who you are on Google. 

Now you can browse the template gallery using the navigation on the left.  If you are part of an organization, you will land in your organization's template gallery, which may be blank.  To access all the templates, click on "Public Templates".

When you find one you like, you click "Use this template" and it will make a copy of the document that you can rename and edit to your heart's content.  If you need a closer look before you make a choice, you can click "Preview" and the document will open larger.  

Have fun browsing templates!

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Show YouTube Videos Without the Clutter

When I need to show a YouTube video, the ads, recommended videos, and comments can really clutter up the page.  I don't necessarily want my students to see those other items because they are distracting or just not...appropriate.  Easy fix!  Use ViewPure.

ViewPure will clear that ads, recommended videos, comments, etc. off of the video.  It will also allow you to create a custom URL (explained later in the post) so you can easily tell students where to go.  With a custom URL you can even set a video to only play a certain segment of the video.  When you, or your students, go to the custom URL, it will start and end where you specify - every time.

To set this up, browse to www.viewpure.com.   Once you get there, you can get your cleaned up YouTube video two different ways.

1.  Copy the URL from the YouTube video that you want to show and paste it into the white box on the page and click the dark blue "Purify" button.  You will then see your purified video.

2.  Go to this page and drag the red "Purify" button into your bookmark bar (for Chrome users).  If your bookmark bar is not showing, press ctrl-shift-B (⌘-shift-B for Mac) to make it appear.  Now, anytime you are watching a YouTube video that you'd like to have purified, you can simply press the Purify button in your bookmark bar and it will purify the video.

You can keep the URL for the purified video to use again, send to a colleague, or post for your students so that when they click on the link it will show them a purified video and not take them to YouTube.  Just copy and paste the URL in the address bar after it purifies your video.

To make a custom URL, you'll want to browse to www.viewpure.com and paste the YouTube URL into the white box and then click on the little gear icon.

This will allow you to enter your desired URL.  Your URL must be alphanumeric (numbers and/or letters) with no special characters.  It cannot be exactly 11 characters and it must be available, meaning someone else hasn't already chosen to use that exact URL with ViewPure.

You have the option of making a password for your video - this is nice if you want to post something you made and put on YouTube on a public website, but don't really want anyone but your students to be able to access it.

This is also where you can set the start and end time.  You must choose a custom URL in order to set the start and end time.

When you are done with your settings, click the blue purify button and you will be all set.  You can give that custom URL to your students and if you wanted it to have a password or a certain start/end time, it will do just that.

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Google Forms: Changing Response Location

Unless you have specified otherwise, Google Forms will create a new responses spreadsheet for each of your forms.  Did you know you can change this location?  One reason why you might want to change this location is to have responses from multiple forms in the same document.

Scenario:  I'm doing a review activity in all of my 6 periods of Science.  I'd like to have all the responses in the same document to be more organized and save me some time while I'm looking over the results. 

How?

Step 1 - Create your form for the first period as usual.  Forms will automatically set up your responses document.  

Step 2 - Copy and rename your form for the second period.  Forms will automatically set up your responses document, but you are going to change that.  Click on the "Responses" menu and choose "Change response destination".  

This will open a window.  Mark the option for it to be on a new sheet in an existing spreadsheet and then click "Choose".

It will open another window where you can choose the spreadsheet where you would like your responses to go.  In this case, I'm going to select Science Review Period 1.  Choose your spreadsheet and then click "Select".

Now, if you go to the spreadsheet you chose, you will see both form responses tabs are there.  You can rename the tabs so you know which period is which.  It puts the new form in front, so the "Form Responses 2" tab will be my Period 2 class.   

Step 3: Repeat Step 2 for all the other Science periods.  

Step 4: Delete the extra response sheets that were created when you made the forms since you won't be using them.

All done!  Handy, right?  

If you are new to Google Forms - check out my Google Forms 101 post.

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