Feeling “Google-y”?

workshop photo

Kathi, Lori, Maureen, Marian, Nicole and Sarah (along with 22 others from around the state) immersed in Google Apps for Education training last week. It was pretty amazing how much we learned in two days. Even when you use something like Google every day, there are so many tricks and shortcuts to learn! Thank you *so* much Molly Schroeder for your great Google Apps for Educators Boot Camp!

Here are some keyboard shortcuts that I found quite useful for Chrome and Google:

  • Control or Command T will open a new browser tab
  • Control or Command F will bring up a search bar to search your document for something
  • Command Shift 4 (on mac) will grab an image
  • If you are using Google Sites, “e” will put you quickly into edit mode

A few good tools or websites that you might be interested in checking out are:

  • COLOURlovers Don’t go there if you don’t have lots of time – it’s too easy to have too much fun picking your colors!
  • PicMonkey Great on the fly photo editing.
  • Flubaroo This is a script that you can add to Google Spreadsheets so that your students can take a quiz using Forms and Spreadsheets and it will automatically grade it for you.
  • ScreenCast-O-Matic Like Jing – let’s you create on the fly videos. One nice feature is that it let’s you pause your movie and regroup. The pro version even let’s you rewind a little. So, not as robust as Camtasia, but perhaps a bit more than Jing.
  • WebcamToy For fun effects! You’ll have to install into your Chrome bar to play.
  • PDF Zen Free online PDF editing. Simple sharing & faxing. No strings attached.

  • Scratch Pad Lets you take notes while you browse, and syncs notes to Google Docs.

Another quick tip you might find useful is to use the URL bar (now called the “omnibar”) and type weather San Francisco to quickly get weather results, or type time Mexico City for the correct time. But there’s lots more, you can also do simple math in the bar, like 5*9+sqrt 10= and Google will do the math for you! There is an entire page dedicated to showing you some of the quick searches that Google can do, found at Google Search Features. Check it out!

We also learned how to create shortcuts for websites you visit often (like Amazon.com or YouTube). We’ll create a quick video and post it later this week. Bottom line, we learned a lot about Google Docs, Google Sites, YouTube video editing, Chrome, and Calendar. If you have questions, be sure to catch one of us so we can share our new Google knowledge base!  Kathi

5 comments

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  1. Sounds like you were in a great course — useful makes it even better

  2. Great blog post! Thanks for sharing your learning and energy!

      • Kathi on April 8, 2013 at 11:52 am

      Better post now that I added *your* name and thanked YOU for the Boot Camp! 😉 Honestly, great two days Molly.

    • Karen Meizner on April 8, 2013 at 1:10 pm

    Ok, if I don’t get grades in on time this semester, blame it on COLORLovers; I’m hooked.

      • Kathi on April 8, 2013 at 1:12 pm

      That is *too funny* Karen. I know just what you mean though. Not only that, I want to go back and re-do all kinds of bad color choices I’ve made in the past! Very dangerous. Glad you found that link useful (or fun).

      Kathi

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