Some Google Updates

 Being a Google School is a blessing and a curse -- a blessing because we have so many wonderful tools at our disposal that make teaching and learning truly engaging! A curse because Google is so good at taking feedback and making updates and changes, it can be difficult to keep up! One of the things I do as part of my service to you, my wonderful friends and colleagues, is try to stay on top of these changes and share the ones I think are more useful or impactful. Here are a couple I learned last week!

Google Slides

• Live pointers: this enables collaborators on a slide deck to see exactly where other collaborators are in real time. 
  
  
  
• Annotations: you can enable a tool pen and annotate slides while you're presenting them! To annotate your Slides presentation, ​​open ‘slideshow mode’ by clicking the ‘Slideshow’ button in the appbar > mouse over the bottom-left side of the viewer and open the three dot menu by clicking on the ellipsis icon >select “Turn on the pen”. To erase annotations, use the eraser tool in the bottom left viewer menu.
  
  
  

Google Docs

• Building blocks: These mini templates help you customize a Google Doc for tasks you need to do, including tagging someone, adding a dropdown menu, embedding files, adding calendar events, creating meeting notes, and more! It's as easy as hitting the @ in Docs and picking from a list of items!
  
  
  

Which one of these new features do you see yourself using most for yourself and with your students? Share on the comments!