Saturday, November 24, 2018

Google Docs Formatting Tips


Compared to the Microsoft Office "ribbon", Google Docs offers far fewer text editing features. Nonetheless, there are some pretty useful tools to make word processing efficient.

Clear Formatting



Have you ever copied/pasted text from a Word document into a Google Doc? You may have noticed that the fonts are not the same. The default font in Word is usually set to Calibri 11; whereas in Google Docs, it is set to Arial 11. To quickly make the fonts consistent, users can select text in Google Docs and click on the Clear Formatting icon located on the far right of the toolbar. In doing so, the selected text will be stripped of its formatting and will be set to the document's default setting.



Paint Format
In contrast to clearing text formatting, Paint Format allows users to copy the font style of selected text and apply it to another bit of selected text. Select some text whose format you'd like to replicate, click the "paint roller" icon, then select the text you'd like to change.


Stay up-to-date on the latest product updates from Google--check out the Keyword's Google Product blog.


Friday, November 9, 2018

Don't Print! But if you must...

Let me start by saying that I AM NOT A FAN OF PRINTING STUDENT WORK TO PROVIDE THEM WITH FEEDBACK! Feedback is much more useful when it is timely--students can make revisions as they work when you provide them with constructive comments in Google Docs rather than waiting for you to print their work, take it home, make suggestions, and return it to them...a process that can take up to a week or more. Nonetheless, several teachers have asked how to print student work that is submitted via Google Classroom without having to open and print each file individually. Fortunately, there's an app for that--PDF Mergy. With PDF Mergy, you can select several files from your computer or from Google Drive and merge them into a single file for one-click printing. See the video tutorial below to learn more.




Thursday, November 1, 2018

Why Reinvent the Wheel?--Write on PDFs

Have you ever tried to edit a PDF file? In short, it's not an easy task. Fortunately, there are several useful Chrome extensions that will allow you to annotate PDF files to save you and your students some aggravation! My favorite is called Kami.

Kami
Kami is a Chrome extension that allows you to view, annotate, share, and collaborate. PDF files can be saved directly to Google Drive with or without annotations for easy sharing. With Kami, you can
  • highlight, strikethrough, and underline text
  • add comments
  • insert a text box
  • insert shapes
  • freehand draw
  • erase
Uses for the Classroom
  • task students with using the highlight, text, and comment tools to annotate literature or primary source documents in a close-reading activity
  • task students with annotating maps by adding text boxes and comments to describe various regions or by drawing historical trade and exploration routes 
  • task students with showing their work on PDF worksheets using Kami's draw tool

Get Kami (install the Kami Chrome Extension from the Chrome Web Store)