December 13, 2016

Introducing Team Drives!
A new feature recently added by Google is the ability to now create a Team Drive within Google Plus. (not all domains will have this feature yet but it is coming in early 2017!)

What does Team Drive do?
Team Drive was designed to be used by large groups of people or clubs as an easy way to share information without cluttering up a person’s shared folder or google drive. The biggest issue with a common shared folder dealt with ownership of a file. If the owner of important documents leaves a school, their files will be removed if their account is deleted. This means any files or documents shared to others will automatically disappear. In Team Drive, all files created are automatically owned by the team members....not one person.

How does Team Drive work?
Once your Google Plus administrator sets up Team Drive for your domain, it will appear as an option in your Google Drive account. Creating a Team Drive is similar to creating a new folder or a new class in Google Classroom. The interface (or look) of Team Drive will be slightly different. It looks more like Google Classroom but looks to be really easy to navigate and use.

To Learn More: https://goo.gl/y48L11 

December 13, 2016

Google Doc Tips and Tricks 

Below is a list of a few of my favorite Google Doc tips and tricks.

Changing Fonts:
In Google Docs, the top fonts are displayed at the very top. But most students do not realize they can find more if they click More Fonts at the bottom of the drop down menu. If you want to see all of the fonts in an easy menu, head over to fonts.google.com. What is great about this site is not only can you see the fonts in all of the different versions but it will give you recommendations as to which fonts go together. There are many different fonts to choose from but it is best to only use 3 or less in your document.

Use Hidden Tables:
Sometimes, you find yourself wanting to have text in a document in more than three columns. Or, you want some of the text in the middle of the document to be in columns while the rest is in a regular paragraph form. To do this easily, insert a table. Decide how many columns you want to use. Once you have the text inserted into the columns, hide the lines by double clicking (or right clicking) anywhere inside the table. Go to Table Properties and change the Table Border to match the background of the document and select Save.

Add Table of Contents
Google Docs will add a table of contents for your document. To make this work, on every section you want to show up in the table of documents, pull down the box that says Normal Text and select Heading. When you are done, go to the top of the document and select the Insert tool. Clear at the bottom is the selection for Insert Table of Contents. Select either the table in a number form or with links to the section of the document.