GAFE | innovative schools

At last – easy Columns in Google Docs

Friday 28th November 2016 While Google Docs provides a great online editing environment, one of those application hangovers from days gone by was the need to use a workaround (adding a table) to create columns in a document. No more! Google have now added a Columns option to the Docs Format menu…. Click on More options to alter the spacing or add lines between … Read More

Organising Shared Documents in Google Drive

Thursday 20th October 2016 When other people share Google documents with you directly, those documents are available in Google Drive > Shared with me. By default, these shared documents are organised by date. Documents from multiple people (and even from people in multiple organisations) are all displayed in the one Shared with me folder list. This arrangement may be OK for … Read More

Create a Quiz in Google Forms

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Google Forms now includes a Quiz feature. We can now easily create a multiple-choice quiz, notify students of their scores immediately, or email the results when everyone has completed he quiz. Download the QuickStart step-by-step guide >>>

School Planning: Learner-centric bandwidth requirements

Friday 2nd September 2016 Schools and educational organisations often calculate how much bandwidth to provide based on budget allocations. A recent aarnet paper considers bandwidth requirements based on the needs of individual learners. For example, aarnet’s research finds that an individual student or teacher requires between 0.2 and 0.5 Mbps to use Google Apps. For a school of 100 concurrent users that … Read More

New Quiz feature in Google Forms

Google has added some new tools to their Forms app – most notably the option to create self-grading quizzes. When setting up a multiple-choice quiz we can choose to notify students of their scores immediately, or email the results when everyone has completed he quiz. More info in this video from Shawn Beard….

The new Google Sites

Friday 17th June 2016 While the various Google Apps and Google Drive have been continually updated and refined over the past few years, Google Sites has languished with a clunky old menu-driven interface. All that is about to change. Drag ‘n’ drop page layout, responsive site design for viewing on multiple devices, etc, is coming to Sites. Here is the … Read More

Chromebooks A-Z

Chromebooks A-Z is a one day hands-on workshop that equips teachers, school leaders and IT staff to become familiar with Chromebooks and their use in K-12 schools. Participants will be involved in activities to explore the features of Chromebooks and how they support the use of Google Apps for Education in the classroom. The local (Illawarra) workshop will be held at … Read More

Latest updates for Google Forms

Last week Google announced a list of new features available in the recently updated Google Forms. The latest update includes: new templates that are pre-populated with suggested questions based on your planned use; the ability to see who has completed your form and who hasn’t; a new Forms Add-on shop; new notification features. Check out more details of the new features >>>

Google Classroom: Export your Gradebook

Monday 7th December Tucked away inside Google Classroom is this option to exported your grade book as a CSV file that can be easily imported into other grade keeping programs….. Other Classroom tips ‘n’ tricks at our Google Classroom How-to page >>>

GAFE – Notify me when shared folders change

Tuesday 10th November 2015 If you share a lot of docs and files in your Google Drive, keeping up with who is editing which files can be a headache. Rather than setting up notifications on every document you share, you can be notified if any document in a particular (shared) folder is being edited. Although this functionality is not yet built … Read More

New Features in Google Apps

Thursday 3rd September 2015 Google has announced a swag of enhancements for Google Apps, just in time for the new school year in the US. New features have been added across Docs, Sheets, Forms, and Classroom. Learn more at the Google Apps blog >>>

Google Classroom – August 2015 Updates

Tuesday 25th August 2015 Google Classroom continues to evolve, with some often-requested new features launched for the new school year in the northern hemisphere. New features include: Ask and answer a question – Teachers can post a short answer question to students in the class stream at any time, with options to allow students to edit their own answer, and to … Read More

Cloud Data Policies

Monday 24th August 2015 How private is your staff and students’ data when it is stored with a commercial cloud provider? Will students and teachers be targeted with advertising, based on the content of their emails and documents stored in the cloud? Who owns ‘your’ data, once it is stored on a remote server, possibly in another country? Can you retrieve … Read More

Google Apps: hands-on workshops

Wednesday 12th August 2015 Are staff at your school embracing new Cloud technologies? Think3’s Scott Barnham will be presenting a one-day hands-on workshop on Google Apps for Education at Port Kembla PS on Thursday 20th August, at Port Kembla PS. These workshops are always popular, and are a great opportunity for all school staff to keep up to date with the … Read More

Google Drive plug-in for Microsoft Office

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 Using this new Google Drive plug-in, people using Microsoft Office for Windows can now open their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents stored in Drive, then save any changes back to Drive once they’re done. (Windows only) Read more >>>

Integrating Classroom, Doctopus and Goobric

Monday 13th July 2015 If you have previously used Doctopus and Goobric (to assess assignments with your pre-made rubrics), you will love the work that the gurus have put in to integrate these tools with Google Classroom. Great overview video from Jennie Magiera… Check out more Google Apps how-to guides >>>

Google – Privacy check

We’ve all been there at some point or another… You just lost your phone and want to wipe your personal information; You attend an event, and you want to share your photos with some people (but not everyone); You hesitate as you download another app that’s asking for a lot of information. Everyday, we make choices that affect our privacy … Read More

Setup Guest access for shared computers

Do you still need a local file-server on your school network? If school-owned shared computers are being used by staff and students only to access their personal files or shared resources on remote cloud servers (such as Google Drive), there is little need to have individual local network logons, or roaming profiles, etc. So long as the computer has a network connection, it can … Read More

Edit Office Docs with Google Apps

Monday 11th May 2015 Using Google’s Office Editing extension for Chrome, you can view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files – without needing Office installed on your computer. Once the extension is installed, Office files that you drag into Chrome, open in Gmail or Google Drive will be opened in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for viewing and editing. You can … Read More

Google Classroom adds Mobile Editing & Grading

Thursday 7th May 2015 Google has released an update to its Google Classroom software, bringing several new features to the mobile app. Teachers can now create assignments through the mobile app, edit them and distribute copies to their students. Teachers can also now grade assignments (with private comments or feedback) on their phones or tablets. Read more at The Journal >>> … Read More

Getting started with Google Apps

Tuesday 28th April 2015 Think3 is presenting a series of Google Apps workshops for teachers….. Google Apps for Education provides a mature, web-based suite of apps to support learning and collaboration in the classroom – on any device. Getting Started with Google Apps is a one day workshop that equips teachers, school executive and IT staff to explore the collaboration, flexibility … Read More

Add multiple teachers – Google Classroom update

Wednesday 22nd April 2015 Google has added a number of new features to Classroom, including the much-requested option to have multiple teachers for each class. A new ‘Invite Teacher’ button is now available on the class’s About page. Another much-requested feature is the option to prepare Assignments and Announcements ahead of time, and save them as a Draft, so that those items … Read More

Create a ‘Heat Map’ in Google Sheets

Tuesday 21st April 2015 Google have updated the Conditional Formatting feature in Google Sheets, with a major makeover. The example below shows how a business might use a ‘heat map’ in Sheets to provide a visual indicator of comparative success across financial periods. Teachers could apply a similar model to gauge student progress in academic indicators, such as reading levels, etc.

Google Classroom – step by step guides

Tuesday 7th April 2015 Google Classroom provides an online classroom environment that you can ‘blend’ with your regular class activities. Use Classroom for sharing resources, submitting and evaluating class assignments, along with co-ordinating class discussions. Check out these Google Quickstart guides and videos >>>

Separate First and Last names in Sheets

Friday 27th March 2015 Do you have a Google spreadsheet with a column containing students’ full names? And maybe you would like to sort the spreadsheet by students’ last names? This neat (and free) add-on will split a column of full names into separate First name and Last name columns – with just a click!

Google Docs – Adding a Table of Contents

Thursday 12th March 2015 If you, or your students, are producing longer documents in Google Docs, the Table of Contents feature may be useful. Here’s Google Gooru’s video about how to add a ToC to to your document….

Pivot tables in Google Sheets

Thursday 5th March 2015 Pivot tables help you summarise and analyse large amounts of data by displaying the information in more digestible formats. While pivot tables have always been available in Microsoft Excel, they are now even easier to make using Google Sheets. Check out this Google Gooru video on how to create a Pivot Table in Sheets…

Google Drive updated

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Not too long ago Google altered the Drive interface, so that any documents that others shared with you were found in a folder called ‘Incoming‘ – I always expected to hear the sound of choppers and see Radar O’Reilly scurrying around the corner! Thankfully, Google has renamed this folder ‘Shared with me‘. How sensible! Who would … Read More

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