What’s New in Google [April 2019]

Check out our latest What’s New in Google blog post for a roundup of all G Suite launches from April 2019.

Enhance presentations in Slides with audio

The long awaited Google Slides audio feature has arrived! Google have now made it possible for us to embed MP3 and WAV audio files from Drive into Slides.

To insert audio in Slides:

  • Insert > Audio and select from your audio files in Drive.
  • Hover over the icon to see playback controls.
  • Right click and select Form options to adjust playback options, volume, and looping. You can also replace the audio icon with your own image.

There are a wide variety of ways to use this feature in the classroom:

  • Presentation Narration;
  • Background music;
  • Voice comments and feedback – record audio comments and feedback and insert into student projects;
  • Interactive tutorial – Create a quick tutorial to demonstrate a tool or skill and add audio snippets;
  • Explain answers – Students could use audio as the medium explain their answers or talk about their work.

Getting help in Docs, Drive, Gmail and more

Google have added a Help menu in Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Gmail, which includes:

  • Help: Which links to the relevant product Help Center.
  • Training: Which links to the relevant product Learning Center.
  • Updates: Info about recent product updates.
  • Send feedback: Lets users provide direct product feedback.

Team Drives is being renamed to shared drive

Google will be renaming “Team Drives” to “Shared Drives”. It is simply a name change, albeit an unnecessary one, and won’t impact Team Drives functionality.

Duplicate sites in Google Sites

It is now possible to copy a site in Google Sites including very large sites. This will be useful for Google Sites users wanting to create a backup of their site or create a template starter site.

To make a copy simply click the More menu > Duplicate site.

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