Digital Tools from BETT 2019

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As a Google reference college, we were invited to present on the Google stand at the BETT Show in January. It was a great opportunity to share how we’re using Google for Education at Barton Peveril and show the impact it has had on digital learning. While at BETT we got to do lots of exploring and talked to various ed tech providers.

  • Peter Horner (IT Manager) presenting about “Going Google” at BETT 2019
  • Adam Say (Library Manager) talking about using Google Sites at BETT 2019

The following is a list of tools and other things we learned about and thought would be useful to share:

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What’s New in Google G Suite [January 2019]

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Catch up on every new feature added to Google G Suite for Education in January 2019.

Material Design for Docs, Sheets, Slides and Sites

This is purely a visual design change, there is no change in how you use the product but you may have already noticed it. This style change is part of a new design approach from Google to keep each app consistent. The changes are as below:

  • Improved interface typography
  • Consistent controls
  • Legible and crisp icons

You’ll see below in the example from Google Slides that the options toolbar is cleaner and more modern. The Share button in the top right corner now matches the colour of the app you are in rather than being blue across all apps.

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Gradebook in Google Classroom

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Recently, we joined the Google Classroom beta. This is a unique opportunity for you to pilot new unreleased features in Google Classroom.

Gradebook beta in Google Classroom
Teachers will have the ability to easily view and input grades across classwork and students. Teachers will also be able to view and customize average grades, set up weighted grade categories, and share overall performance with students. For more information, check out the official blog post.

  • Getting started: Please take a look at this Help Center article to learn how to setup your Gradebook and this Help Center article about how to use your Gradebook.
  • Platform: The new Grades page and the ability to configure Gradebook settings are only available on the Web. Using and viewing grade categories and average grades are available on the Web, iOS, and Android.
  • Access: All previous classes created by beta participants will include the new Gradebook features. Any co-teachers who are added to a class with Gradebook enabled will have access to the Gradebook for that class as well.

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The 12 Apps of Christmas: 6. Save and Scan to Google Drive

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The season of advent is upon us, shops are covered in tinsel, and Christmas songs are playing on the radio. That means it’s time for The 12 Apps of Christmas! During December the IT Services team and other contributors will be sharing our favourite digital learning apps and tools.

A festive series of new blog posts will be published and tagged as the 12 Apps of Christmas. Posts will include details about the app and ways it could be used effectively in a professional/teaching/learning context. We hope this will give you the opportunity to try out a new tool and learn more about the kind of things we’re involved in.

On the sixth day of Christmas IT gave to me…
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5 Top Tips for Google Docs

Automatic Substitution

If you want to save yourself some time, in the long run, you can set some Automatic Substitution to automatically change words that you type in. For example, if there are certain words you spell incorrectly all the time, you can save time by putting in the incorrect spelling and the correct spelling. This will save you time as the change will be made instantly instead of having to use Spell Checker.
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5 Top Tips for Google Sheets

Split text into columns

You can easily split some data from a single cell into separate columns. A good example of this is a list of student names where their first and last name is in the same cell, you can split the first and last name into different columns with a couple of clicks. This then lets you filter the data by first name or by last name.

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5 Top Tips for Google Slides

Embed a timer

In some lessons, you might want to let the conversation flow but others you might want to set a time limit on discussions. You might want to give the students 5 minutes to do a specific piece of work but sometimes get distracted and lose track of the time. You can easily embed a timer straight into your Google Slides presentation to help manage class time better.

It’s not exactly a function of Slides but fortunately, there’s a hack for that!

In your Slide, click Insert then Video and search for a YouTube video titled “X minute timer” where X is the amount of time. Select the video and adjust it to size. Have it fill half the page or a small portion of the page. Just press play on the video when you are presenting.
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5 Top Tips for Google Forms

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These 5 tips will help you streamline your Google Forms usage and save you some time.

Google Sheets Responses

Google Forms can automatically send all responses to a Google Sheets document so you can easily view and filter the data you are receiving. This means you can easily make your own tables and charts with the information you have. It’s updated instantly when someone submits a response to a form, you just need to turn it on.

To do that, open your form and click on to the Responses tab. You can turn it on at any point in a form and all the data will be added in even if people have already responded. On this page there will be a green Sheets icon, if you click this icon it will ask if you want to create a new spreadsheet or send the responses to a new spreadsheet. Select which one you would prefer and click Create.

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5 Top Tips for Google Classroom

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These 5 tips will help streamline your Google Classroom usage, manage how students access data and generally save you time.

Comment Bank

The Comment Bank allows you to write a set of comments that you can easily click and add to student assignments without having to type them out each time.
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What’s New in Google G Suite [October 2018]

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Catch up on every new feature added to Google G Suite for Education in October 2018.

Google Docs Activity Dashboard

Earlier this year, Google introduced an Activity Dashboard in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides that allows you to easily keep track of who has viewed a document and when they viewed it. This is especially useful for shared documents. For example, a teacher can check if a student has seen a file already and alert them that it’s been updated.

To access Activity Dashboard and see who’s viewed a file in Docs, Sheets, or Slides, click Tools > Activity Dashboard. The first page allows you to see the read status from users the document is shared with, as well as all users in college.

Google has added the Viewer Trend option, which is similar to Google Analytics. It enables you to specify a time range and see daily viewers on a graph, which is particularly useful for documents shared with a large number of people.

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