Google Drive Add Ons - Mindmeister

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR4PJI4GtM4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Google+ for Business

On March 12th, I am conducting a training for Kewaunee County Economic Development with a focus on Google+ and Google Drive.  I have a lot of experience using Google Drive, so I am just looking for ideas on how businesses can use these tools.  In education, we use them for student work, planning agendas, gather data, and more.  I am looking for more ideas specifically for businesses, so please post them in the comments below.

I use Google+ for myself and just create my Google+ page for my 21st Century Academy business.  There are a ton of videos out there that give you ideas for using Google+ to connect with customers and grow your business.  Here are a couple that I have watched.  Please share more resources if you have others you think are helpful.

Embed Videos in Google Forms

I LOVE Google's newer feature!  Google now added the ability to embed a YouTube video or another video that is posted on the web into a Google Form.  This makes it possible to post a video and then have students answer questions about what they learned. This is great for formative assessment especially in a flipped classroom setting.  If you are familiar with embedding an image, this will be super easy!  

When you have your Google Form created, you click on the "Add item" button and then click on "Video".  If you want to insert a You Tube video, put in the name of the video and click the search button.  Select the video you want from the list of search results and then click "Select" at the bottom of the window.  You then get back to the Form where you can add a title and a caption for the video.  You can select to have the video aligned to the right, center or left.  Then click "Done".  Your video is now on your form.

Below the video, you can add questions about the video just like you normally add questions to a Form. This allows you to actually build a quiz or formative assessment related to the video.  Students don't have to go to another website to find the video...the video is embedded into the Form!

If you want to have a self-scoring quiz, check out Flubaroo.  It is a free script that you can use with Google Forms to auto-score the quiz.  It is super simple and saves you a ton of time!

I plan on using this feature as I build modules for my upcoming grad class on Google Tools.  I am building modules that participants will work through.  This will allow me to get some formative feedback as they work through the training videos.  How do you think this feature can enhance teaching and learning?

Master Slides in Google Slides

I really like a lot of the features in Google Slides (formerly called Google Presentations).  The ability to create a presentation collaboratively allows users to work together in a way that was not possible before.  Crowdsourcing presentations is a great way to gather information.  Pulaski Community Schools' K-5 Assessment Committee created a presentation on formative assessment to be used at each school.  Committee members were each assigned certain topics and created their slides when they had time.  The presentation was used and shared with all K-5 staff at each school's building inservice.  As teachers shared additional formative assessment ideas, they were added to the presentation.  We now have a great resource for our teachers when they are looking for formative assessment ideas!  I even found it on someone's blog!  That was encouraging to know that what we created was found valuable outside our organization as well.

A new feature that Google just added to Slides it the ability to create a Master slide.  We all have to admit that the themes in Google Slides is a bit limiting.  That is the one thing I miss from PowerPoint.  Well, now it will be really easy to create Master slides for each slide type. This allows you to have the same background and header or footer on each slide.  Previously, you had to go to each slide and recreate this.  Even with the "Duplicate Slide" option, you often had to recreate text boxes and bulleted lists in order to get the slide to do what you want.  It is really easy to do as well!  Check out this two minute video for instructions. (Note: The video title at publishing was Master Slides in Google Sheets...this was a typo on their part.)

Content Discovery Tools - How to find great online content with less effort

Content Discovery Tools by Robin Good | ZEEF is a blog article listing tons of content discovery tools by focus.  I was pleased to see that several of the tools I use made it to the list.  Flipboard was the top one listed for News Discovery tools.  I love how Flipboard allows me to create my own online magazines and share them with others.  I am looking for a new RSS reader since Google Reader has gone away.  I have been trying to use Feedly and see that it also has the top spot on Robin's list of RSS readers.  I just have to get comfortable with it.  There are several other tools that I had not heard of and will have to check out. Which tools do you use?

Content Discovery Tools - How to find great online content with less effort

Content Discovery Tools by Robin Good | ZEEF is a blog article listing tons of content discovery tools by focus.  I was pleased to see that several of the tools I use made it to the list.  Flipboard was the top one listed for News Discovery tools.  I love how Flipboard allows me to create my own online magazines and share them with others.  I am looking for a new RSS reader since Google Reader has gone away.  I have been trying to use Feedly and see that it also has the top spot on Robin's list of RSS readers.  I just have to get comfortable with it.  There are several other tools that I had not heard of and will have to check out. Which tools do you use?

Google Slides updates

Changing......As always, Google is continuing to improve their products.  That is one of the things I really love about the Google Apps suite.  They are looking for ways to make their tools more user-friendly all the time.

Google Slides, which is their version of presentations, is adding more features all the time.  Some of the most recent changes are being able to more easily see the name of the person who is editing a slide, being able to add content to a custom theme by just right-clicking and saying "Add to Theme", and being able to reuse custom themes by clicking "from another presentation" on the themes pop up window.  For details on how to use these new features, check out the Google Blog article, "Real time text cursors and other enhancements in Slides".

Another newer feature is how you access your various Google Tools from the home page.  When you log into Google, you now get the Google search bar, your frequently used web sites AND access to your various tools all on the same page.  I find this very convenient.

One feature I would like them to add is that I can customize order of the tools.  I would like to be able to either select the tools that appear at the top OR have the ones I use the most automatically appear there based on my usage statistics.  For any Google product, you can submit suggestions through their Feedback link.  This is located by going to the gear button in any tool. It is either directly listed on the gear options OR you click on Help and then you see the link on the next popup window.  You type in what your suggestion is and then you are able to send them a screenshot showing them exactly what you mean.  This is so easy!  I just submitted my feedback, so we will see if they can engineer that feature.

Be on the lookout for more changes in the Google products.  Just as I enjoy seeing the seasons change, it is fun to see the Google products change and improve.