5 Google Drive Features You May Be Overlooking

Today we’re introducing you to five Google Drive features that are often overlooked but can be incredibly beneficial. Let’s dive in and explore these features along with some tips.. Did you know you can add a description to your folders to give a brief overview of their contents? To do this, right-click on any folder […]

47,000 People Get Their Educational Technology Tips This Way

This morning when I checked my YouTube Studio account I noticed that my little channel had passed the 47,000 subscriber mark. Despite publishing videos on YouTube since at least 2009, I’ve never had a viral hit and probably never will. Instead of worrying about that I just try to make as many helpful videos as I can. […]

18 Google Keep Tutorials for Teachers

A couple of weeks ago I published a short tutorial on how to use Google Keep to scan and search handwritten notes. Publishing that tutorial prompted me to update my playlist of tutorials on ways that teachers and students can use Google Keep. The full playlist of 18 Google Keep tutorials can be seen here […]

18 Google Calendar Tutorials for Teachers

Earlier this week I shared directions for creating appointment slots in Google Calendar. After doing that it occurred to me that I’ve made a lot of Google Calendar tutorials over the years. And while I have a big playlist of more than 700 Google Workspace tutorials, I’ve never broken out the Google Calendar tutorials into […]

Five Uses for Google Docs Besides Essay Writing

Over the last sixteen years I’ve used Google Docs and had students use Google Docs for lots of activities besides just writing essays. I’ve used Google Documents to facilitate analysis of primary sources, to create charts and diagrams, to facilitate group note-taking, to publish simple webpages, and to make collaborative task lists. All of those […]

How to Create a Reservation System in Google Calendar

This morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a suggestion for an alternative to using Google Forms for letting students book time in the library during the school day. Since the school was already using Google Workspace, my first suggestion was to try using Google Calendar with the appointment slots […]

Staying Organized With Google Drive Folder Descriptions

At the start of every new school year I have high hopes for doing a better job of staying organized than I did the previous year. This year is no exception to that rule. One area in which I hope to improve my organization is in Google Drive. For years I’ve simply relied on the […]

How to Add Audio to Almost Anything in Google Workspace

Mote is a great tool for adding audio comments to Google Docs, Google Classroom, and Google Slides. You can also use Mote to add audio to Google Forms and insert audio into Google Slides with just one click. Mote also lets you record audio messages to share directly in Gmail and or via QR codes. All of […]

How to Scan and Search Handwritten Notes in Google Keep and Docs

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I shared a couple of studies that support the benefits of handwriting notes over typing notes. In the newsletter I also shared a couple of tips for digitizing handwritten notes. One of the things that I mentioned was using Google Keep to digitize handwritten notes. Google Keep’s free mobile […]

How to Annotate Images on Google Jamboard

Even though it’s not as popular as it was a couple of years ago, Google Jamboard is still a great tool for conducting a variety of online activities including collaborative brainstorming sessions, creating word mover activities, and annotating images. It’s the annotating images use case that I demonstrate in this new video. Annotating images in […]

71 Google Slides Tutorials

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. Over the last decade I’m made more than eighty Google Slides video tutorials. Some of them are a bit outdated now, the rest are still relevant. […]

Google Introduces a New Notebook

Fourteen years after shuttering Google Notebook, Google is getting back into the online notebook business with a new tool called NotebookLM. NotebookLM is a new product that utilizes AI to generate summaries, questions, and ideas from the Google Documents that you add into your notebook. It’s a beta product that has a waiting list. I’ve […]

How to Publish Google Slides Presentations

Around this time every year I field a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that I update many of them. That’s why over the […]

How to Use Audio and Video in Google Slides

How to Create Your First Google Slides Presentation

The Solution to a Frustrating Google Slides Problem

When Google finally added a built-in audio option for Google Slides, we were all happy because we no longer needed to use unreliable third-party add-ons to use audio in our presentations. However, four years later there are still some quirks to adding audio into Google Slides presentations. One of those quirks was recently driving me […]

How to Move Your Gmail in Bulk

A few weeks ago I published directions on how to use Google Takeout to move your most important Google Workspaces assets out of one account to use in another. Late last week a reader asked me about just moving Gmail messages from one account to another. You can do that with Google Takeout, but there […]

How to Use Google Takeout 2023

It’s that time of year when I start to get lots of questions from readers about what to do with files in their Google Workspace accounts before they leave one school for another. In fact, just yesterday I answered that question three times. My answer was to use Google Takeout to create zip files that […]

Here’s How to Blend Images in Google Slides

The image that you see to above was used in a blog post that I wrote years ago. It recently surfaced again when I was looking for an old math resource (sadly, no longer available). The image above was made by blending two images together in Google Slides. To make the final image I went […]

How to Customize Page Headers in Google Sites

Yesterday morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for advice on how to make the page titles stand-out on her Google Site. What she was referring to was the list of page titles in the header of the site itself. For years Google Sites didn’t offer many customization options that would […]

25 Gmail Tips for Teachers

If answering email takes up way more time in your day than you would like it to, take a look at my playlist of 25 Gmail tips for teachers and students. The playlist includes everything from how to sort your Gmail messages to filtering and blocking senders to email etiquette tips we all need to be reminded of from time to […]

47 Google Forms Tutorials

In a video that I published earlier this year I mentioned that the vast majority of my videos don’t get more than a few hundred views. But there are some outliers. The biggest outlier is my simple video about the basics of creating a quiz in Google Forms which has received nearly half a million views. That’s […]

How to Impose Time Limits on Google Forms – And 46 Other Tutorials

Over the weekend a reader reached out to me for help with Google Forms. Specifically, he wanted to know how to impose a time limit on a Google Form. I was happy to help. The method that I use to impose a time limit on Google Forms is to enable the Google Forms add-on called […]

Three Helpful Google Sites Updates

Earlier this year I published 29 Google Sites tutorials. I’ll soon need to add a 30th tutorial to that list because this week Google released three helpful updates to Google Sites. The latest updates to Google Sites give you more design control and improve the collaboration process in Google Sites. In Google Sites you can […]

How to Add Audio to Google Slides

Last week I was looking through my YouTube Studio analytics when I noticed that one of the most-searched phrases was “add audio to Google Slides.” I took that as a sign that it was time to create a new video about how to add audio to Google Slides. So that’s exactly what I did. In […]

How to Add Q&A to Your Google Slides Presentations

There are plenty of ways to gather questions and feedback from students in a digital format. But one of the ways that is often overlooked is to just add a Q&A component to a slide presentation. That can be done quite easily in Google Slides right from the presentation menu. Watch my video embedded below […]

An Overview of Using and Detecting Artificial Intelligence

This week’s news that Google Workspace will have new artificial intelligence tools added to it throughout the year was not unexpected. It was another sign that if you haven’t being paying attention to the development of AI tools this year, you should start paying attention to them. Even if your school tries to ban or […]

AI Tools are Coming to Google Workspace Tools

It was only a matter of time until Google made a big announcement regarding artificial intelligence in their productivity tools. That announcement came today. All of the details about Google’s implementation of AI in Google Workspace can be read here. The short version is that new AI features will be added to Google Docs and […]

Changes are Coming to Your Favorite Google Workspace Tools

If you opened a new Google Document today you might have seen a new little clock icon appearing in the upper-right corner of the screen. But if you didn’t see it, don’t worry because you will start seeing it before too long. That clock icon is one of the updates coming to Google Docs, Slides, […]

How to Create Custom Google Slides Guidelines

One of the many “hidden” features of Google Slides is found in the view menu. It’s there that you’ll find the option to turn on and turn off gridlines (Google calls them guides). Not only can you turn on or turn off the guidelines, you can also add additional lines and create custom spacing for […]

45,000 People Get Their Educational Technology Tips This Way

Yesterday morning when I checked my YouTube Studio account I noticed that my little channel had passed the 45,000 subscriber mark. Despite publishing videos on YouTube since at least 2009, I’ve never had a viral hit and probably never will. Instead of worrying about that I just try to make as many helpful videos as […]

The Google Docs Features Starter Pack

I recently published a playlist of 76 Google Docs tutorials. But you certainly don’t need to use all of the features of Google Docs demonstrated in that playlist let alone watch all of the videos. In fact, I’m often asked for a list of the “must-know” features instead of all of the “could use” features. […]

25 Gmail Tips for Teachers and Students

As part of my on-going quest to bring some organization to the more than 1,500 videos on my YouTube channel, I’ve created a new playlist of 25 Gmail tips for teachers and students. The playlist includes everything from how to sort your Gmail messages to filtering and blocking senders to email etiquette tips we all […]

A Quick Tip for Sorting Gmail

Here’s a little tip that I shared with a friend last weekend and I figured a few of you might appreciate it as well. When an email that you are expecting to appear in your primary tab in Gmail appears in another tab, you can simply drag it over to your primary tab. When you […]

29 Google Sites Tutorials for Teachers

Yesterday afternoon a reader emailed me to ask if I had any resources she could reference while building a website with Google Sites. The first video that I thought to send her was this one covering all of the basics of creating your first Google Site. In looking for that video I came across a […]

How to Set Expiration Dates for Google Docs

Setting access expiration dates is one of the many “hidden” or frequently overlooked features of Google Documents. This is a feature you can use when you want to share a Google Document with a person or group of people for a limited time. By setting an expiration date you can grant access for as little […]

How to Add Video Playlists to Google Sites

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I wrote about preparing for some workshops that I’ll be leading this spring and summer. Creating resource pages is one of things that I always do in preparation for leading workshops. Those resource pages always include some video tutorials that people can refer to after the workshop if […]

75 Google Documents Tutorials

Last week I published a new tutorial about how to add footnotes to Google Documents. After publishing it I decided that it was time to continue on my quest to bring some better organization to my YouTube channel. The next step in that quest was to create a playlist of my Google Documents tutorials. I […]

How to Add Footnotes to Your Google Documents

When it comes answering tech support questions it is often easier to show the solution with a screencast video than it is to write directions. That’s why I made this screencast video when earlier this week I was asked “how can I add footnotes into my Google Documents?” In the video I show where to […]

How to Find the Source for Images in Google Slides

A couple of weeks ago I published a video about using the explore function in Google Slides to find images to use in presentations. Since then I’ve had a few people ask for clarification about how to use the image source when using the other image search option in Google Slides. The process of finding […]

27 Google Drive Tips and Tricks

I’m in the process of organizing my YouTube channel to be more than just two big playlists of Practical Ed Tech Tips and Google Tutorials. To that end, this morning I went through my channel and put my current and relevant Google Drive tutorials into one playlist. My new Google Drive tutorials playlist contains twenty-seven […]

How to Use Voice Typing in Google Slides

Google recently improved the voice typing function in Google Docs and Google Slides. The tools work in the same way as before, but the voice recognition and accuracy is better than it has been in the past. If you’ve never tried voice typing in Google Slides, watch this new video to see how it works. […]

An Important Tip for Using Image Search in Google Slides

The Explore function in Google Slides can be a good tool to use to find images to use in your presentations. The images found through the Explore function in Google Slides are supposed to be Creative Commons licensed images. However, Google doesn’t make that information readily available within the Explore image search results. That’s why […]

How to Convert Google Forms into Microsoft Forms

Yesterday I published separate collections of tutorials for using Google Forms and for using Microsoft Forms. But what if you are transitioning from a Google Workspace environment to an Office 365 environment and don’t want to recreate all of your forms from scratch? There is a solution to that problem. In the new video that […]

Dozens of Tutorials for Getting Started With Google Forms

In a video that I made last week I mentioned that the vast majority of my videos don’t get more than a few hundred views. But there are some outliers. The biggest outlier is my simple video about the basics of creating a quiz in Google Forms which has received nearly half a million views. That’s […]

5 Google Docs Features You Might Have Overlooked or Forgotten About

Google Documents has been around so long now that some of us who have been using it from the start may have forgotten about some features. I did that just the other day when I “remembered” to use the version history to go back and look at a some edits that I had made to […]

How to Include Google Maps in Your Google Documents and Canva Documents

Canva’s new documents tool has a bunch of great features that I highlighted in a video last month. One of those features is the ability to embed just about anything into the body of your document. In the demonstration that I gave last month I embedded videos and presentations. You can also embed Google Maps […]

How to Sort Google Sheets and Forms Entries in Reverse Chronological Order

Last week a reader reached out to me for some guidance on how to handle a Google Form that had more than one hundred submissions. He was looking for a way to quickly find the most information submitted in the most recent entries. My solution to that problem was to use Z-A sort in the […]

Best of 2022 – Overlooked Google Docs Features

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. As Google Docs […]

How to Redirect Students When They’ve Completed a Google Form

Yesterday I published a video about collecting pictures through Google Forms. That post was inspired by a request for help from a former colleague of mine. This post was also inspired by the second part of that colleague’s help request. The question he had was about how to direct people to purchase tickets for an […]

How to Collect Pictures Through Google Forms

Last week a former colleague of mine reached out to me for help setting up a system to collect profile information to put into a printed event program. He was looking for a convenient way for people to submit a profile picture and brief biographies to include in a printed program. My suggestion was to […]

Bookmarking With the Updated Google Keep Chrome Extension

A little over a month ago I was worried that my days of using the Google Keep Chrome extension to bookmark websites were coming to an end. Based on the number of views of that blog post and the emails that I got in response to it, I wasn’t the only one who had that […]

A New Google Slides Feature That Could Help Reduce Collaborator Confusion

For as long as Google Slides has existed one of the problems with it has been collaborators accidentally editing over each other’s work. In the early days of Google Slides, before I put collaboration protocols in place, I broke up a few “fights” between students who had accused each other of “wrecking” the other’s work. […]

Threadit is Closing – A Few Alternatives to Try

Threadit is a Google product that when it launched I thought could have become a rival to Microsoft Flip. As feature-laden as Threadit is, it never really caught on and now Google is shutting it down in a few weeks. On December 19th Google is closing the doors on Threadit. If you have videos in […]

How to Search Within Your Google Drive Folders

Yesterday afternoon I shared a tip for keeping track of what you put into your Google Drive folders. This morning I have a tip on how to find the things that you and or your collaborators put into your Google Drive folders. Google Drive has contained a search function almost since its launch more than […]

How to Add Descriptions to Google Drive Folders

A few days ago I received an email from a reader who was looking for suggestions about how to keep track of what is contained with the folders of a Google Drive account. My suggestion was to try adding descriptions to the folder. When you right-click on a folder in your Google Drive account a […]

Tips for Managing Google Drive Folders

A couple of mornings ago a reader asked me to help her figure out how a Google Doc she didn’t remember sharing was accessed by a colleague. After ruling out that her account had been compromised I discovered that the document in question was part of a shared Google Drive folder. The document was created […]

Is This the End of the Google Keep Chrome Extension?

I’ve been using Google Keep for nearly all of my bookmarking for the last half-dozen years or more. It nicely syncs my bookmarks, notes, and reminders between my phone and any computer that I use when logged into my Chrome profile. Unfortunately, my days of using Chrome as my primary bookmarking tool may be coming […]

How to Adjust Playback Volume in Google Slides

Support for audio files was welcome addition to Google Slides when it was announced in the fall of 2019. But four years later there are still some quirks to it to watch out for. And sometimes the setting you need isn’t quickly found. That was the case a few days ago when someone emailed me […]

How to Set Notifications for Individual Google Documents

Google Drive has long let you receive email and desktop notifications for edits and comments to your shared Google Docs. Unfortunately, it was an “all or nothing” setting. In other words, you could either receive notifications or not receive notifications for all documents. Recently, Google Docs was updated so that you can now set notification […]

Five Google Workspace Tips That Can Make Your Day Better

The best part of a being a teacher is making connections with kids. Making those connections takes time. Unfortunately, teaching also comes with a lot of procedural and administrative tasks that take away from the time that can be used to build those connections with students. But you can get some of that time back […]

How to Print Guest Lists for Google Calendar Events

Google Calendar, like most products in Google Workspace, has lots of little features that are often overlooked. Just because those features are overlooked doesn’t mean that they’re not useful. For example, you can print a guest list from an event on any of your Google Calendars. In the short video that is embedded below I […]

Grading Google Forms Short Answers Without Google Classroom

Last week I got an email from a reader who was looking for advice about grading short-answer questions in Google Forms. Specifically, the person wanted to know if there was a more efficient way to grade short-answer questions than tabbing through the “responses” pages. While you can have short-answers automatically graded for you in Google […]

Is a Website Down or Is It You? Here’s How to Find Out

Earlier this week a reader emailed me looking for a video that I made a couple of years ago. The video she was looking for was this video that shows two ways to check if a website is down of if it’s just you. The first method demonstrated in the video uses a website called Down […]

Write With Emojis in Google Docs

Earlier this week Google added a new emoji option into Google Docs. The new option enables you to type @ followed by an emotion to add an emoji into a sentence in your Google Documents. For example, you can type “@smile” to generate a list of smiley emojis that you can pick from to insert […]

Three Google Workspace Updates to Note This Week

Just about every week Google makes updates to Google Workspace. Some only affect administrators of Google Workspace domains while others affect all end-users of Google Workspace products. This week there were three Google Workspace updates that teachers and students should note. More Accessibility Controls People who use screen readers, magnifiers, and braille now have more […]

Ten Popular Back-to-School Tutorials for Teachers

YouTube’s channel analytics provides a lot of useful insights for people like me who publish a lot of videos and write a lot of blog posts. Not only does my YouTube channel’s analytics page tell me how many people watch and like my videos, it also tells me things like when those videos were watched […]

How to Loop Videos in Google Slides

Yesterday I published a blog post about playing Google Slides on an automatically advancing loop. That blog post prompted a question from a reader about playing videos on a loop within a Google Slides presentation. Specifically, she wanted to know if she could have a video play on a loop. The answer is yes, and […]

How to Play Google Slides on an Automatic Loop

The new school year is quickly approaching and you might be thinking about your first morning with staff or students. That first morning is often filled with information that needs to be repeated quite a bit. Things like the wi-fi network and code, lunch times, and other logistical information. You could make yourself hoarse by […]

Google Docs, Slides, and Forms Accessibility

As the new school year approaches and you start to update some of your old Google Docs, Slides, and Forms take a moment to assess the accessibility of those materials. And if necessary, it’s fairly easy to improve the accessibility of your Docs, Slides, and Forms. Google DocumentsGoogle Documents has some built-in accessibility options that […]

How to Add Alt Text to Images in Google Forms

On Monday I answered a question from a reader who wanted to know if it was possible to add alt text to the images that she uses in Google Forms. My answer was, “yes, but not in the way you would in Google Docs or Slides.” To add alt text to images Google Docs and […]

Google Classroom Now Has Add-ons – For Some Schools

Yesterday afternoon Google made an announcement that had some teachers on Twitter buzzing. That announcement was that Google Classroom now has add-ons for teachers to use. Those add-ons are supposed to make it easier to access popular tools like EdPuzzle, WeVideo, and Pear Deck from Google Classroom. But before you get too excited, at the […]

Search Tip – How to Find Published Google Workspaces Files

Refining Google searches according to domain is one of my favorite ways to get students to look beyond the first couple of pages of their typical Google search queries. Students can specify site or domain in Google’s advanced search menu to limit results to those that are only from top-level domains like .edu. They can […]

New Text Formatting Options in Google Forms

At the end of June Google added some new text formatting options to Google Forms. Those options enable you customize the fonts used for titles, section headers, and questions within your Google Forms. Last week Google added even more text formatting options to Google Forms. The latest update to Google Forms gives you rich text […]

Custom Tables in Google Docs

Earlier this year Google added new table templates into Google Documents. Those templates include tables for project management and checklists. While those templates are good, there are still times when you might be better off creating your own custom tables in Google Documents. Today, there are more table customization options in Google Docs than ever […]

New Certify’em Tutorial – Automatically Send Certificates from Google Forms

For the last five or so years I’ve used Certify’em to automatically send certificates to students when they successfully complete a quiz in Google Forms. I also use it to issue certificates to participants in my workshops, webinars, and self-paced courses. There have been some changes to Certify’em since the last time I published a […]

Best of 2022 So Far – Dropdowns in Docs

I’m taking the rest of the week off. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far. A couple of weeks ago I shared some information about the new project planning templates in Google Docs that include dropdown menus. Today, I’d like to share how you can […]

Best of 2022 So Far – Mote

With the exception of the webinar I’m hosting tomorrow, I’m taking the rest of the week off. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far. One of my absolute favorite new tools in 2021 was a Chrome extension called Mote. With Mote installed you can add […]

Automatically Forward Important Google Workspace Email to Secondary Email Address

It’s summer (in the northern hemisphere) and for many people reading this blog that means it’s time to cut back on reading work email. Some folks simply turn on a vacation responder for the summer and come back to a pile of email in late August. Others like to occasionally check their email during the […]

New Google Forms Customization Options

There is good news for those who are tired of the same old font choices in Google Forms. Starting today (for some users) you can now mix and match font styles in the Google Forms that you create. On Tuesday Google announced the release of new font options. These options include using different fonts for […]

Five Ways to Work With PDFs in Google Drive

Some of the questions that receive more than frequently than others revolve around working with PDFs. The answers that people are looking for are often “hidden” in plain sight. Case in point, just uploading a PDF to Google Drive gives you a handful of ways that you can work with it. In this new video […]

Ten Google Sites Tutorials for New and Experienced Users

Summer is here (in the northern hemisphere) and it’s a great time to casually work on things that we don’t always have time for during the school year. One of those things could be creating a new class website or revamping an existing site. Those who work in school districts that use Google Workspace already […]

Five Things I Like About the New Chromebook Screencast Recorder

Last week Google introduced a new way to record screencasts on your Chromebook. You can watch my tutorial about how to use it right here or as embedded at the end of this blog post. After a week of using it, here are five things that I like about it and I think will be […]

How to Embed Full Page Content Into Google Sites

The design options in Google Sites have come a long way in the last decade. In the early days Google Sites had lots of functionality, but little in the way of design options. Today, there are not only lots of great themes and templates, there are also many ways to customize the layout of every […]

How to Record Screencasts on Chromebooks Without Extensions

A couple of days ago Google announced some new Chromebook features for teachers and students. One of those features is a new screencast recording tool that is built into the latest version of Chrome OS. The new screencast recording tool built into Chromebook OS removes the need to use third-party extensions like Screencastify or Loom […]

How to Share Photo Albums in Google Sites

At this time of year I field a lot of questions about sharing photographs from school events like field trips, graduations, and concerts. Late last week one person who emailed me with that kind of question wanted to know what I thought about just creating a Google Drive folder and inviting parents to be viewers […]

Use Google Drive to Comment on PDFs, Images, and Videos

Google Drive can be used to store just about any kind of file that you have. What a lot of people overlook is that you can use Google Drive to comment on those files without converting them into Google Docs or other Google Workspace formats. For example, you can upload a PDF to your Google […]

How to Archive Google Classroom

The end of the school year is here or at least very near for most of us. Google Classroom users will probably want to archive their classes at the end of the year. Archiving a class prevents students from accessing it so that you can go on summer vacation without any worry that a student […]

How to Create a Custom Theme for Your Google Site

Do you use Google Sites for your classroom website? Do you have students use it for classroom projects like making digital portfolios? Are you tired of using the same stock themes that Google provides? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you need to watch my new video about creating custom themes for […]

How to Make a Google Form

YouTube Studio has an interesting analytics feature that shows you what people are searching for on your YouTube channel. It will also show you something called a “content gap.” Content gaps are terms that people have searched for but haven’t found good content to match their searches. “How to make a Google Form” was a […]

Getting Started With Jamboard – And Ideas for Using It In Your Classroom

This morning I received an email from a reader who wanted to know if I had a video about the basics of using Google Jamboard. While I’ve made a bunch about various uses of Jamboard, I didn’t have a current one about just the basics of Jamboard (my previous one is a little outdated). So […]

New Google Docs Features You Might Have Missed

This spring (fall for my friends in the southern hemisphere) Google has added some new features to Google Docs. I’ve written about a couple of them in the last month. There are others that I haven’t covered until I published this new video. Watch Five New Google Docs Features You Might Have Missed to learn […]

Add Dropdown Menus Into Sentences In Google Docs

A couple of weeks ago I shared some information about the new project planning templates in Google Docs that include dropdown menus. Today, I’d like to share how you can also insert dropdown menus into any part of a Google Document without using a template. It is possible to add a dropdown menu into any […]

How to Create an Online Course With Three Simple Tools

Summer is coming (in the northern hemisphere) and for many of us that means spending some time participating in professional development activities as a leader, learner, or both. If you find yourself trying to create some online professional development courses for the summer, I have a new video just for you. In this video I […]

How to Create and Send Personalized Certificates in Google Workspace

As we get close to the end of the school year you may find yourself needing to create and distribute certificates to students. These could be for recognition of any number of things from honor roll to volunteer work. It used to be that giving certificates for these occasions required buying ream of pre-printed certificates […]

Create Location-based Reminders in Google Keep

Other than the Chrome web browser, Google Keep is the app that I use more than any other on my Pixel 5 phone (a phone I like, but don’t love). I use it for bookmarking websites, creating to-do lists and shopping lists, and to set reminders for myself throughout the day. My favorite aspect of Google […]

Gmail Settings to Avoid Embarrassment

We’ve all done it, you hit “send” on an email then realize you misspelled an important word or you click send and realize that you replied to all instead of just to the original sender. These situations can be either fairly innocuous or downright embarrassing depending upon who the email was sent to and or […]

New Google Docs Templates for Project Management

For years I’ve used tables in Google Documents to help students organize group notes and to keep track of who is doing what in group projects. On Monday Google introduced some new table templates that can be used for those same purposes. The new table templates in Google Docs appear to have been developed with […]

How to Download and Reuse Google Drive Files

Yesterday I published a post about using Google Takeout to download the contents of your Google Workspace account before leaving a job. If you only want or need a handful of files, there is an easier option than using Google Takeout. That option is to simply download the individual files in your Google Drive account […]

Changing Schools After This Year? Use Google Takeout Before You Go

In the last week I’ve had a couple of people reach out to me for advice on what to do with their Google Drive files when they leave their current jobs at the end of the school year. My answer was to use Google Takeout to create zip files that they can re-use when they […]

Five Videos to Build a Google Forms Course

Yesterday I published a blog post about creating an online course with ConvertKit. A couple of weeks ago I published a blog post about building a professional development course and distributing it via Gmail. In those posts I gave the example of distributing a series of tutorial videos about topics like using Google Forms. If […]

Five Image Editing Features Built Into Google Slides

Regular readers of my blog probably know that I’m a big fan of using tools like Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud Express, and Pixlr to edit and enhance pictures. But sometimes those tools feel like they have almost too many options. Furthermore, some schools don’t allow access to those tools because they would prefer that students […]

How to Create B-roll Media Galleries to Share With Students

In last Sunday’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I wrote about the idea of creating a b-roll media gallery to share with your students. The idea of creating a b-roll media gallery is to compile a collection of image, video, and audio files that your students can use in their multimedia projects. By doing this your […]

How to Use Google Slides in Canva

This is an update to a blog post that I published a couple of weeks ago about the same topic. In that blog post I outlined how to use PowerPoint and Google Slides in Canva. I’ve since learned a couple of things that warrant publishing an update. First, a lot of Google Slides users ignored my […]

Make a Word Game With Google Sheets – A Fun Way to Learn About Formulas

Google’s Applied Digital Skills website is a good place to find lesson plans and activities that you can use to help students learn how to use many features of Google Workspace tools. To capitalize on the recent trend of word games like Wordle, Google recently published a new Applied Digital Skills lesson called Make a […]

Stop Printing the Internet

Last weekend I got a new television (our old one died) just in time to watch some great NCAA basketball games. While watching one of the games on Saturday evening I saw a new Progressive Insurance commercial. The premise of the commercial is that Progressive can’t prevent us from becoming our parents but can save […]

Try Choice Eliminator Lite for Removing Choices from Google Forms

Twice in the last 24 hours I’ve been asked about options for removing choices from Google Forms as they get used up. The tool that I used to recommend was Choice Eliminator (the original and version 2). It seems that add-on has been removed from the Google Workspace Marketplace. Fortunately, Choice Eliminator Lite is still […]

How to Change Google Calendar Notifications

I have some good news for you if, like another reader who emailed me this morning, you are trying to keep Google Calendar notifications flooding your inbox. It’s easy to adjust the frequency with which you receive email, desktop, and mobile notifications from Google Calendar. To do that simply go into the settings menu for […]

How to Add Narration to Google Slides Without Add-ons

Earlier this week someone replied to my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter with a question about narrating Google Slides. Specifically, she wanted to know about options for adding narration to Google Slides that didn’t require installing Google Slides add-ons or Chrome extensions. My immediate suggestion was to try using Vocaroo to record the audio then upload […]

A Better Way to Update Charts in Google Slides and Docs

Google Forms provides handy charts and graphs summarizing responses to the questions within your form. Those charts and graphs can be embedded into Google Slides, Google Docs, and Google Drawings. This week Google made it easier to make sure you have the latest version of those embedded charts and graphs in your Slides, Docs, or […]

Five Frequently Forgotten Google Docs Features

Perhaps it’s just me, but do you ever feel like you’ve been using Google Docs for so long that you forget about the basics until you need them? For example, the other day when a friend asked me about options for sharing a Google Doc with someone who didn’t use Google Docs I completely blanked […]

How to Use Canva Designs in Google Slides

Last week a reader sent me a question asking if it was possible to use Canva design templates in Google Slides. The short answer is yes, you can use Canva designs in Google Slides. The longer answer involves taking a couple of steps to get there. To use a Canva design template in Google Slides […]

Watch Out for These Common Google Slides Audio Errors

Last year I wrote quite a few blog posts about a Chrome extension called Mote that lets you record and add audio to almost anything in Google Workspace. As great as that extension is, it’s not for everyone. In fact, earlier this week I got an email from a reader who was looking for some […]

Three Common Google Forms Mistakes – And How to Avoid Them

I’ve been helping teachers create quizzes with Google Forms for well over a decade. And over that time there’s a pattern to the Google Forms problems that teachers bring to me. My completely unscientific data on this tells me that about 90% of all problems with Google Forms quizzes come down to one of three […]

Ten Overlooked Google Docs Features for Students and Teachers

As Google Docs has improved and added more features over the years some of those features get forgotten or just plain overlooked. Just because those features don’t jump out, doesn’t mean they’re not helpful to students and teachers. In this new video I highlight ten of my favorite “overlooked” Google Docs features for students and […]

40,000 People Get Their Ed Tech Tips This Way

Yesterday morning I logged into my YouTube studio dashboard and saw that my little channel of screencast videos now has 40,000 subscribers! My videos aren’t anything fancy. I just write some bullet points on a notepad then record using Screencast-o-matic. I do some light editing (blurring, trimming, and occasionally adding text overlays) and then hit […]

Citing Sources in Google Docs and Word Docs

The other day I sarcastically Tweeted, “can you imagine if we let students cite sources the way that ESPN lets reporters name anonymous sources?” My Tweet was in response to ESPN’s somewhat botched reporting of Tom Brady’s retirement from playing in the NFL. Tweeting that question did prompt me to dig up some tutorials on […]

How to Prevent Printing of Shared Google Documents

At the end of yesterday’s post about adding watermarks to Google Docs I included a reminder that you can disable printing options for when you share a Google Document. Disabling the printing option is helpful when you want to improve the security of a document that you share with someone else for review. For example, […]

How to Add Watermarks to Google Docs

Late last year Google finally added a built-in option for adding watermarks to Google Documents. Unfortunately, that option only allowed you to use images as watermarks and the implementation of those watermarks was a bit clunky. Thankfully, last week Google added a new option for using text as the watermark in Google Documents. The new […]

How to Copy Images from Google Docs to Slides and Back

When you upload an image and insert it into a Google Document, it should then also be available through Google Drive to insert into future documents and into Google Slides. However, in practice it’s rarely that quick and simple. There is an easier option if you want to copy an image from a Google Document […]

Try Screencastify & Google Keep for Adding Comments to Google Docs

On Sunday evening I got an email from someone who had seen my videos about Mote and wondered if there was something similar for adding video comments to Google Docs. One of my suggestions was to try the e-Comments Chrome extension which I reviewed last spring. Another option is to use a combination of Screencastify […]

Create a Teacher Report Card With Google Forms

Last week a teacher emailed me looking for suggestions on how to create a teacher report card that her students can complete anonymously. One of the things that I suggested was to create a Google Form that doesn’t require students to sign into their Google accounts. Google Forms includes a course evaluation template. I would […]

Adding Bird Calls to Google Slides – Answering a Reader’s Question

Yesterday I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a little help with her students’ Google Slides projects. The students were creating slideshows about birds and wanted to add some audio to the slides. Using Mote wasn’t an option for her students. So my suggestion was to find or record audio outside […]

Two Ways to Create Virtual Manipulatives for Elementary School Math Lessons

Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who was looking for some ideas for creating virtual manipulatives she and her elementary school students to use during remote instruction days. I had two ideas immediately come to mind that I shared with her and I’ll share with you. The first idea I shared […]

How to Record and Embed Audio in Google Docs

Last Friday I published a video about all of the things that can be done in Google Workspace when you have the Mote Chrome extension installed. The latest of those things is the ability to record audio and embed it directly into your Google Documents. When you do this you’re able to play the audio […]

Add Audio to Almost Anything in Google Workspace

One of my absolute favorite new tools in 2021 was a Chrome extension called Mote. With Mote installed you can add audio comments to Google Docs, Google Classroom, and Google Slides. You can also use Mote to add audio to Google Forms and insert audio into Google Slides with just one click. Mote also lets […]

Best of 2021 – Save Google Forms Progress

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one from August. This week Google finally added a feature to Google Forms that teachers and students have requested for years. You can now […]

Best of 2021 – How to Find Public Google Workspace Files

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one from May. Last week I published an animated GIF of how to search by domain to find publicly shared Google Workspaces files. Over […]

Best of 2021 – Interactive Checklists in Google Docs

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. New blog posts will resume on January 1st. This week Google announced more than a dozen updates to Google Workspace products. Included in those updates […]

How to Create Google Docs and PDFs With Hyperlinked Chapters

A kind reader who purchased my new ebook asked me how I was able to create the hyperlinked sections within the ebook. There are a couple of ways that it can be done, but the way that I did it is built into Google Documents. Like nearly every document that I create, I created 50 […]

How to Use Google Keep as a Comment Bank

Last week I had a reader ask me if there was a way to have a comment bank in Google Documents without using Chrome extensions or Google Classroom. My suggestion was to try using Google Keep as a comment bank in Google Documents. To use Google Keep as a comment bank in Google Keep you […]

An Easy Way to Quickly Add Voice Notes to Google Docs

Yesterday morning I published The Easiest Way to Add Narration to Google Slides. In that blog post I featured a Chrome extension called Mote. Mote, as I’ve mentioned in the past, can be used for adding audio to a bunch of Google Workspace tools including the comments on Google Documents. In this short video I […]

The Easiest Way to Add Narration to Google Slides

When Google finally added native support for audio in Google Slides people were excited until they found out how clunky the process is. You have to first record the audio outside of Google Slides, then upload it your Google Drive, and then insert it into your slides. Fortunately, the Mote Chrome extension streamlines that whole […]

How to Annotate Historical Images on Jamboard

From magnetic poetry to collaborative brainstorming sessions to mapping activities, there are lots of ways to use Google’s Jamboard in online and in-person classes. One way that I like to use Jamboard is to have students annotate images that I share with them. In particular, I like to do this to have them add commentary […]

How to Embed Google Sheets Into Websites

Earlier this week a loyal reader named Judith sent me a question about embedding Google Sheets into websites. I was happy to answer her question and made this short video to explain how to include a Google Sheet in Google Sites and in Blogger. In the video I include instructions for resizing the spreadsheet when […]

Helpful New Table Options in Google Docs

This week Google added a handful of helpful new features for customizing tables in Google Documents. A couple of the new features are things that I’ve wanted for years. The first new feature that I’m excited about is the option to specify that a table row not be split at a page break. Making that […]

Google’s Favorite Chrome Extensions of the Year

On The Keyword Google has announced their favorite Chrome extensions of the year. I have no idea what the criteria was to be included in the list. That said, I took a look at the list and noticed that some of Google’s favorite Chrome extensions are also some of my favorite Chrome extensions. Those favorites […]

Add Voice Recordings to Google Forms Questions, Answer Choices, and Feedback

Mote is a Chrome extension that became popular this year because it made it easy for teachers and students to add voice recordings to Google Slides, Google Classroom, and Google Forms. The latest update to Mote, released today, lets you add voice recordings not only to the questions in your Google Forms but also to […]

Two Options for Automatically Removing Choices from Google Forms

Earlier this week a reader of my newsletter sent me a question looking for a way to limit the number of times that an answer choice could be used on a Google Form. My first suggestion was to try the Google Forms add-on called Choice Eliminator 2. Choice Eliminator 2 is a Google Forms add-on […]

Link to Sections Within the Pages of Google Sites

The current version of Google Sites has come a long way in the last year or so. It now includes almost every feature that the old version of Google Sites offered (good thing, because the old version is scheduled for deprecation soon). One of those features is the ability to link to a specific section […]

Copy Specific Pages in Google Sites

Google Sites (the new, current version) has a new feature that could be helpful to those people who make a lot of variations of the same website. That new feature is the ability to copy specific pages from one site into a new site. The new page copying option lets you select a specific page […]

How to Create Filters and Labels in Gmail

Last week I answered an email from a reader who wanted to make sure that email from specific senders always ended up in a priority folder in her Gmail account. My suggestion was to create a filter for the sender’s email address and then apply a label to the email. I’ve done this for years […]

How to Create Re-usable Daily Check-in Forms

Last week a reader emailed me with a question about creating a form that could be used many times over for things like daily check-in or exit ticket questions. He wanted to be able to have all responses in one place where responses could easily be sorted according to date or name. My suggestion was […]

Three Updated Google Docs Features

Over the last month or so Google has added some handy new features to Google Docs. I’ve written about them as they were announced by Google. But if you would like to see how they work, watch this new short video. In the video you will see the following Google Docs features that have been […]

How to Create Digital Thankfulness Turkeys

Last fall the switch to online and hybrid classes presented lots of challenges and required changing the way that we have done some of our “old standby” activities. For example, last fall I received a few emails from readers looking for some ideas on how to do a digital version of the classic Thanksgiving Thankfulness […]

Take a Look at Your Google Docs Activity Dashboard

The activity dashboard is one of the “hidden” or overlooked features of Google Docs that I use on a fairly regular basis. It’s a handy little feature to use whenever you’re sharing a document, but is particularly useful when sharing with more than one other person. Through the activity dashboard you can see who the […]

Google Docs Gets an Improved Citation Option

For a few years I recommended EasyBib’s Google Docs add-on for creating citations and bibliographies in Google Documents. I got away from it when it started to get glitchy. What I always liked about it was that it had an integrated resource search that made it easy to quickly look up books and websites then […]

Certify’em – Send Personalized Certificates via Google Forms

Certify’em is a Google Forms add-on that I’ve been using for the last few years whenever I need to distribute personalized certificates. Certify’em will automatically send certificates to students when they get a minimum score on a quiz conducted with Google Forms. You set the minimum passing score that triggers the delivery of the certificate. […]

Accessibility in Google Docs and Slides

On Saturday morning I published a video about word art, fonts, and special characters in Google Docs and Slides. Later in the day someone Tweeted at me to “make sure the fonts are accessible.” I replied with a section of my free Practical Ed Tech Handbook that is dedicated to accessibility. An excerpt of that […]

Tips on Word Art, Fonts, and Special Characters in Google Docs and Slides

Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who wanted some advice to pass along to colleagues about using custom fonts in Google Docs. I made this short video to lend some assistance. Before you watch the video there are a few things to note about fonts in Google Docs and Slides. Unfortunately, […]

A Helpful New Feature for Formatting Google Docs

Google Docs users who regularly create multiple page documents will be happy to learn that Google is adding a new page break feature to Google Docs. The new page break option will let you insert a page break before any new paragraph. This means that you’ll no longer have to manually insert spaces to create […]

Google Adds More Audio and Video Controls to Google Meet

This week Google announced a new feature that will be welcomed by any teacher who regularly uses Google Meet to host online classes. That feature is the ability to selectively mute participant audio and video. For quite a while you’ve been able to mute all participants and turn off their webcams. The new feature prevents […]

Reminder – Old Google Sites are Going Away!

After five years of warnings, Google is finally ending support for the old version of Google Sites on December 1st. If you’ve been clinging to the hope that Google wouldn’t force you to transition to the current version of Google Sites, it’s time to give up that hope and convert your old site to the […]

An Overview of Google Forms Quiz Settings

Back in July I published a series of videos and blog posts detailing what you need to know to get started using Google Classroom, Drive, Docs, Slides, and Forms in your classroom (those are linked below). Of course, Google had to make some updates to Google Forms right at the start of the new school […]

How to Combine Multiple Google Forms Questions in One New Form

One of my top time-savers when creating a new Google Form is to import questions from other forms that I’ve previously created. For example, if I’m making a quiz for my current students I will import questions from quizzes that I made the year before. I don’t re-use the entire quiz from the previous. I […]

How to Schedule Re-use of Google Forms

Earlier this week a reader sent me a question about re-using the same Google Form multiple times per week or month. The idea being that students would answer the same questions multiple times throughout the week or month and the teacher would be able to see all of the responses in the same Google Sheet. […]

How to Find and Manage Google Slides Add-ons

One of the questions that I received this week for Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions was a rather broad question of, “do you have any favorite Google Slides add-ons for high school students?” That’s kind of a hard question to answer without having more context of what you want students to accomplish in Google […]

New Google Meet Settings for Google Classroom Users

For many of us virtual meetings and online classes aren’t going away anytime soon. Google has responded to that by steadily adding more features to Google Meet over the last eighteen months. The latest features improve handling of Google Meet within Google Classroom. Now when you use the Meet link within Google Classroom students will […]

A Small, Helpful Change to Google Slides

Last week I shared a couple of updates to Google Docs, including watermarking documents, that teachers and students should find helpful. There was also a small update made to Google Slides last week. That update was to replace the “Present” button with a “Slideshow” button. If you don’t already see it, in the next week or […]

How to Add Watermarks to Google Documents

Earlier this week Google announced that a new watermark feature would soon be added to Google Documents. That new feature appeared in one of my Google accounts this morning so I immediately gave it a try. The new watermark feature in Google Docs is very easy to use. In this short video I demonstrate how […]

Five Google Calendar Features You Should Know How to Use

It has been a while since I made any tutorials about Google Calendar. The user interface, particulary the user interface for background settings, has changed a bit since the last time I published a tutorial about Google Calendar. So when a reader sent me a question about calendar sharing, I was prompted to create a […]

Two New Google Docs Features to Note

This week Google announced the addition of two new features in Google Docs. Both new features will be welcomed by teachers and students. The first new feature is an increase in the size of the comments box in Google Docs. Currently, the comments box accomodates 35 characters before a new line is created. The new […]

Five Helpful Google Keep Features for Students

Google Keep is a great tool for middle school and high school students to use to create assignment reminders, bookmark important research findings, organize information, save images, and re-use notes in their research documents. All of those features and more are demonstrated in my new video, Five Google Keep Features for Students. Five features of […]

Save Google Forms Responses in Progress

About a month ago Google announced that they were finally adding an autosave option to Google Forms. This new features lets students leave a Google Form and then come back to it later to finish answering the questions on it. The option to save work in progress in Google Forms is rolling out to all […]

How to Cite Sources in Google Docs

At the beginning of every school year I like to revisit some topics with my students to which they always say, “we learned this last year.” One of those topics is citing the sources of the information that they use in their writing and in their presentations. It never hurts to review this information with […]

Combine Canva and Google Drawings to Make Graphic Organizer Activities

Last fall I published some videos about using Google Drawings and Google Jamboard to create labeling activities, mapping activities, and some graphic organizer activities. Those all relied on using the drawing tools built into Google Drawings and Jamboard. The aesthetics of the activities was limited by your imagination and what you could do with the […]

The Difference Between a Chrome Profile and a Google Account

This morning as I was starting to get caught up on a backlog of email I answered a question from a reader who wanted to know if I had a video about Chrome profiles that she could share with her staff. I do, here it is. In the video I demonstrate and explain the difference […]

Fish, Moose, Jam, and Drawings – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’re getting ready for a day of outdoor fun. My youngest daughter wants to go catch a fish and my oldest daughter wants to see a moose. Fortunately, a little time in the boat on Mooselookmeguntic Lake provides a great opportunity to make both of my daughters happy. I hope […]

Add Your Voice to Google Forms

Yesterday I shared five Google Forms refreshers for the new school year. That post focused on settings that are built into Google Forms. You can do even more with Google Forms when you install Google Forms add-ons and or Chrome extensions. For example, you can add voice recordings to your Google Forms through the use […]

Five Google Forms Refreshers for the New School Year

Answering a reader’s question about Google Jamboard ideas that she should pass along to her colleagues prompted me to think about some “need to know” features of other Google Workspace tools for teachers. My mind turned to Google Forms as it is a tool that when used correctly can help be a huge time-saver for […]

Five Ideas for Using Google Jamboard This Fall

A couple of weeks ago I published an excerpt from The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. That excerpt mentioned a couple of ways to use Google Jamboard in online and in-person classroom settings. This morning I had a reader reach out to me to ask if I had any other suggestions that she could pass along […]

Five Ideas for Using Google Drawings This Fall

A couple of weeks ago I shared directions for an icebreaker activity that can be done in Jamboard or Google Drawings. Jamboard and Google Drawings have a lot of similarities. There are some differences between the two that can make one better than the other depending upon the use case. Here are five ways to […]

An Important Update About Flippity

Flippity is one of my go-to resources for making fun things like games and random name pickers with Google Sheets. Recently, some of the Flippity templates stopped working as they originally did. I first experienced this during a live webinar earlier this month. At first I thought it was just a quirk and it would […]

An Update to Google Meet Call Quality

One of the most annoying things to start any video call is the process of resolving sound quality issues like a persistent echo. Google recently announced an update to Google Meet to address that problem. Google Meet will now notify you when your audio is causing an echo for others. In other words, even though […]

Five Google Docs Activities Besides Just Writing Essays

Over the last fourteen years I’ve used Google Docs and had students use Google Docs for lots of activities besides just writing essays. I’ve used Google Documents to facilitate analysis of primary sources, to create charts and diagrams, to facilitate group note-taking, to publish simple webpages, and to make collaborative task lists. All of those […]

A Tip for Structuring Group Notes in Google Docs

Fourteen years ago when I first started using Google Docs with students I got the idea to have my whole class take notes on the same document. It sounded good in my head on my drive to school. In practice it was a disaster as my students were quickly frustrated by accidentally writing over each […]

Five Things To Make With Google Slides Besides Standard Presentations

Based on the initial view count, yesterday’s post about creating interactive diagrams in Google Slides seems to be fairly popular. That’s inspired me to put together a list of other ways to use Google Slides besides just making standard slideshow presentations. I’ve made videos about all of the following ideas and those videos are included […]

How to Create Interactive Charts and Diagrams in Google Slides

Google Slides is full of little “hidden” features that are good to know how to use after you’ve covered the basics of using Google Slides. One of those little features is the ability to hyperlink any text or object within a slide. Another handy feature is a selection of premade charts and diagrams that you […]

Last Chance! Update Your Old Google Sites

Google is finally closing the book on the old “Classic” version of Google Sites on September 1st. They’ve been threatening to do this for almost five years and now the sun will set on Classic Google Sites at the end of this month. If you haven’t converted your old Google Sites to the current version […]

How to Create a Random Question Generator

Earlier this week I shared directions for an icebreaker activity in which students complete the sentence, “where I’d like to go…” with a picture of themselves in front of a place they’d like to visit. That’s a great activity, but it’s not necessarily a quick activity. If you’re looking for a quick icebreaker activity, having […]

Poetry, Maps, and Templates – Google Jamboard Activities to Try

This is an excerpt from the 2021-22 version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook which will be released on Sunday evening (Eastern Time). If you’re subscribed to my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter, a copy of the handbook will be sent to you on Sunday. Google’s Jamboard became wildly popular during the 2020-21 school year and […]

Where I’d Like to Go – An Icebreaker With Google Drawings

As the new school year starts many you may find yourself looking for some new ideas to break the ice and get to know your new students while they also get to know each other. One thing that I’ve always asked my students is “where in the world would you go if you could go […]

How to Create Task Reminders in Gmail and Google Keep

As the new school year approaches we’ll all, teachers and students, have goals to do something better this year. If one of those goals is to do a better job of keeping track of homework assignments and other tasks, Google Keep and Gmail have some built-in tools that can help you reach that goal. Add […]

How to Use Google Drive to Create a B-Roll Gallery for Your Classroom

The best way to have students avoid accidentally using copyrighted images or videos in their own projects is to use media that they’ve created themselves. One of the strategies that I frequently recommend to teachers as a way to help students avoid any copyright issues in their work is to use media from a classroom […]

Three Time-saving Email Tips for Teachers

Like most people I have a love-hate relationship with my email inbox. Over the years I’ve tried all kinds of tricks and tools to try to handle my inbox more efficiently. What I’ve found is that those tricks and tools only work if I also use a time-blocking strategy to decide to clear my inbox […]

How to Find the New Autosave Feature in Google Forms

Earlier this week Google announced the launch of a new autosave feature in Google Forms. As I wrote on Tuesday, teachers and students have been asking for this feature for years. That’s why I haven’t been surprised by the number of emails that I’ve gotten this week from teachers asking if they need to do […]

A New Google Forms Feature Teachers Have Requested for Years!

This week Google finally added a feature to Google Forms that teachers and students have requested for years. You can now save your work in progress when answering questions in Google Forms! Google Forms will now save students’ work in progress when they are completing a quiz or any other Google Form that you give […]

My Most Popular Tutorials in July

In July my YouTube my YouTube channel passed the 37,000 subscriber mark. In July I published twenty-three new tutorials including some in-depth guides to getting started with Google Workspace for Education. On my YouTube you’ll also find tutorials on a wide variety of topics including making your own Android apps, video creation tips, Microsoft Forms tutorials, podcasting tips, […]

How to Give Partial Credit in Google Forms

Google Forms provides an easy way for teachers to create self-grading quizzes. The current version of Google Forms lets you create self-grading quizzes that contain multiple choice, true/false, short answer, and even multiple selection questions. The one problem that some teachers run into when using self-grading Google Forms is how to give partial credit to […]

Collect Chat – Turn a Google Form Into a Chatbot

A couple of weeks ago I published a video about how to create your own chatbot with a free tool called Acquainted. This morning I discovered another tool for creating your own chatbots. Collect Chat is a free Google Forms add-on that you can use to turn a Google Form into a chatbot. I gave […]

Getting Started With Google Classroom – Teacher and Student Perspectives

This week I have been publishing a series of videos designed to help teachers who are new to Google Workspace learn what they need to know to use Google Drive, Docs, Forms, and Slides in their classrooms. Continuing in that series I’ve just published a new video titled Getting Started With Google Classroom. In Getting […]

Getting Started With Google Forms – The Basics and More

All week I’ve been releasing new video tutorials designed to help new Google Workspace users get started with the basics and a little more. The first installments in the series covered Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Slides. You can see those tutorials here and here. This morning I published a tutorial on Google Forms […]

Getting Started With Google Slides – The Basics and More

This week I’m releasing a series of videos intended to help new Google Workspace users. Yesterday, I published videos on getting started with Google Drive and Google Docs. Today’s videos are all about Google Slides. Google Slides for Beginners shows viewers eight key aspects of Google Slides that they need to know. Those aspects are outlined […]

Getting Started With Google Drive and Google Docs – Everything You Need to Know

This week I’m releasing a series of videos designed for new Google Workspace users. All of the videos will be published on my YouTube channel throughout this week and next week. The first videos in the series is Getting Started With Google Drive – Settings and Uploads. This video explains how to adjust the display of […]

21 Google Docs Features You Should Know How to Use

This week I’m releasing a new series of videos covering everything a new Google Workspace user needs to know. The videos will be released throughout the week on my YouTube channel. I actually teased the series a little bit on Friday when I published two videos detailing twenty-one features of Google Docs that all users […]

What Was Watched in June – My Most Popular Tutorials

In June I published a new video every other day on my YouTube channel. There are now more than 36,000 people subscribed to get notified as soon as I publish a new video. My channel contains more than 1,000 tutorial videos covering everything from fundamental aspects of Google Workspaces to making your own Android apps to making […]

How to Create Interactive Checklists in Google Docs

This week Google announced more than a dozen updates to Google Workspace products. Included in those updates is a new text box feature in Google Documents. The new text box option can be used to create interactive checklists. Those checklists, just like any other Google Document, can be shared with colleagues and students who can […]

15 Updates Coming to Google Workspace for Education

This week Google announced a bunch of updates that will be coming soon to Google Workspace for Education products. If you missed them, as I did earlier this week, here’s a short summary of the key updates to note. File / Video Security Updates Some shared files in your Google Drive will require using a […]

How to Share Google Slides Without Sharing Speaker Notes

Earlier this week I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a way to share his Google Slides with his students without them being able to see his speaker notes. Unfortunately, there isn’t an add-on or extension that will do that for you. Instead you have to make a copy of your […]

A Short Overview of Google Sites Publishing and Sharing Settings

During a webinar that I hosted earlier today the topic of Google Sites access settings came up. That topic usually does come up whenever I talk about using Google Sites with students. It comes up because just as there is a difference between publishing and sharing Google Documents there is a difference between publishing and […]

Icons8 – Easily Add Icons to Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets

Icons8 is a new Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets add-on that offers a large gallery of free icons that you can easily insert into your documents, slides, and spreadsheets. Within the Icons8 gallery you’ll find thirty-five categories of icons. All of the icons are available in a variety of sizes from as small as 50×50 […]

Tag: Google Workspace