Recently, Google launched several new features to their line of GSuite for Education tools that you’re going to love.  Take a look at these new features for Hangouts, Classroom, Forms and Sheets.  See how you can use them in your classroom.

Captions in Hangouts

Not necessarily new, but very cool, this feature is available to users of Google Hangouts Meet.  When conducting a video call with a guest lecturer, presenter or whomever, navigate to the bottom right on the task bar – if you don’t see the task bar at the bottom it should appear when you move your mouse to the bottom of the screen.  Click on the More Menu (three dots) and choose “Turn on Captions”.  Hangouts Meet then identifies the speakers words and displays them at the bottom of the screen.  This feature must be turned on by each participant in the call if desired.  Take a look at the GIF below to see captions at work.

1.  Navigate to the bottom of the screen
2. Click on the More menu (three dots)
3. Choose Turn on Captions
4. Captions will appear at the bottom

This feature is great if you have students who may be hearing impaired or who just don’t pay attention that well during webinars from guest speakers.

Google Classroom Rubrics

For quite some time, teachers have been waiting a long time to add objective grading criteria to their assignments in Google Classroom.  In June, Google released news to districts that they could participate in a beta test to try Rubrics in Google Classroom.  The Rubrics beta allows teachers to set criterion for grading, establish levels and create descriptors for each level that students can follow when completing work.  Teachers can choose to add multiple criteria, and can even re-use rubrics in future assignments.  If you are interested in this beta test, click here to learn more. If you are granted permission to set up the beta on your domain, follow the instructions below to create a rubric.

1. From Google Classroom, choose Classwork
2. Click Create > Assignment
3. Enter a Title and Instructions
4. Click Create Rubric
5. Enter your Criterion, Points, Levels and Description
6. Add additional criteria if needed.
7. Click Save and then Assign your lesson.

 

Import Questions into Google Forms

As long as Google Forms has been around, teachers have asked me if there is a way to create a semester review or test that included questions from unit tests.  Like most out there, they wanted the ability to recycle questions with a bit of modification, but without reinventing all those questions.

In July, Google answered the pleas from so many of you and added the Import Questions tool to the floating toolbar in Forms.  Just click this icon, choose the form from which you want to import questions, and a sidebar opens with a list of questions you’ve previously used.  Click on the desired question or questions, and choose Import Questions.

1. Click the Import Questions icon on the floating toolbar
2. Choose the form from which you want to import questions
3. Select your questions
4. Click Import Question(s)

Google Sheets Themes,  Scorecards and Slicers

Google recently added several new features to Sheets, including Themes, Scorecards and Slicers.

Themes allows users who insert charts and graphs into their sheet, to coordinate the color theme of all the items on their sheet.  After creating your data and graphs:

1.  Click Format
2. Choose Theme
3. Choose the color set you wish to apply

Scorecards can be used to display information about the data in your sheet.  Need to display a sum, count or average?  Add a Scorecard…

1. Choose the Insert menu
2. Click on Chart
3. Under Chart Type, scroll down to Other and choose Scorecard
4. Click Edit to change from Number to Sum, Average, etc…
5. Aggregate your data or choose a baseline range.

For more information on this feature, check out the support page.

Slicers can be used to quickly filter tables and graphs to present data in a different view.  Add a slicer and view format based on criteria in any column in your data set.

1. Highlight your data set
2. Click Data and Choose Slicer
3. Select the column of data for your slicer
4. Click the Filter icon to filter tables and charts.