Docs – Page 2 – Jake Miller

Font Formatting in Google Comments

Did you ever really, really, really want a student (or colleague) to understand your feedback on a portion of a Google Doc? Well, my friend, I have got news for you. Surround a word (or group of words) in a Google Docs (or Slides, Sheets, Drawings…) Comment with asterisks (*) and you’ve got bold text. 💥Boom💥 Surround them with underscores ( _ ) and you’ve got italicized text. 💥Boom💥

🤔❓Why does using the underscore lead to italicized text instead of underlined text!? I have no idea. Ask the Googs.❓🤔

Even more puzzling, there’s no option to create underlined text. But hey, 3 minutes ago, you didn’t know about how to do bold or italics, so calm it down, buddy.

Here’s the real head-scratcher: some people seem to want strikethrough text in a comment. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Why? I dunno. But it’s possible. Just surround your text with hyphens (-) and you’ve got strikethrough. Medium-half-excited-don’t-know-why-anyone-wants-this-feature-💥Boom💥. But again, 4 minutes ago, you were clueless that this was even within the realm of possibility, so turn your snark dial down, Francis. Anyhow, here’s a GIF. Please enjoy.

Using Answer Tables in Google Docs

A few weeks ago, I posted a little hack that I like to use for making student answers in Google Docs easier to find. You can see that post here. Multiple people reminded me of a practice that many elementary educators love using:

Instead of just pre-formatting the answer space, actually create an answer table. This makes it less likely that students accidentally mess up the pre-existing content in the doc and makes their answers easier to find. This is a great practice when assigning these Docs as Make a Copy for Each Student in Google Classroom.

There are 3 different ways to do this. I’ll show each in the GIF below and then go over them in some additional detail below the GIF.

More details on what you see in the GIF below . . . Continue reading Using Answer Tables in Google Docs

Creating & Locking Google Slides Backgrounds

If you’ve ever created assignments in Google Docs, Slides or Drawings for students to complete, you’re all too familiar with this struggle: students accidentally deleting, moving or modifying elements of the assignment.

Well, in Google Slides, there are 2 ways to prevent this from happening and here’s the easier of the two: put the content of the assignment in as a background. Then, the only way a student can delete, move or modify it would be to actually go into the background settings and change it…. which can’t be done by accident.

Let me show you how, first with an animated GIF and then with step-by-step instructions.

Set up your slide with any text, images, etc.
File > Download as > PNG Image (JPEG will work too)
Clear off the slide.
Click Background, then, next to Image, click Choose.
Click the downloaded image file from Step 2.
Voila! Send your assignment out in Classroom (or share it with students or have them make a copy).

Insert Drawings into Docs Being Assigned in Classroom

When given the chance, I’m always going to pick an assignment where students are creating their own representations of their mastery of learning standards. However, I know that it’s not realistic to expect this all the time. So, I can see the value in annotating images rather than just typing. Google Drawings and Google Slides are great platforms for this . . . but what if it’s part of a bigger activity that does involve typing? Well, insert a drawing into a document, put the picture in, and tell the students to annotate it! Check it out in the animated GIF below (typed instructions follow the GIF).

In the Google Docs menu, click Insert > Drawing.
In the Drawing that pops up, copy and paste in an image (or drag it in from a separate tab as I did in the GIF).
Add instructions within the Drawing as needed.
Click Save and Close to finish preparing the drawing.
Assign the document in Google Classroom as Make a Copy for Each Student.
When students open the document, instruct them to double-click on the image that they see to open up the drawing and annotate it.

Pre-Format Student Answers

Grading stinks. Anything that we can do to make it better–without sacrificing the quality of the pedagogy or feedback–is worth doing! Here’s a little trick to make it easier to locate student answers in Google Docs (or other files) that you assign in Google Classroom . . .

Saving Images from Google Docs

When edtech rockstar Matt Miller says “Hey Jake, you should make this into an #EduGIF!” you listen. He was right, too. It was an awesome tip.

It was a pickle that I had been in before, but I had never known the solution. You’re preparing something–a lesson, a blog post, whatever–and you need a picture. Not just any picture, but a picture that you’ve used before. It’s in that one Google Doc, but you can’t get to the picture from anywhere else. So, you right-click on it in that Google Doc . . . but there’s no Save Image option.

There are a handful of ways that you can get that image saved as a file on your computer, but the one that Matt sent to me is pretty awesome. It’s just a few steps and super easy. And it’s even more convenient if you have multiple images that you need from the same Google Doc. So, let’s get to it – first an animated #EduGIF and then the steps for those of you who like to read words.

Open the Google Doc
Select File > Download As > Web Page (.html, zipped)
Locate the saved file on your computer
Unzip the file (on my Mac, all that I have to do is double-click)
A new folder should have been created. Inside of that folder will be all of the images that are in that Google Doc. Feel free to move your image out of there and delete the other files as well as the zipped file.

Add a Popup Message to your Google Docs

Ever wish that you could tell people something when they open up your Google Docs? Maybe “Make a copy of this document, answer the questions and share it with your teacher!” or “This is a draft!”

Well, it’s possible. Some simple coding in the script editor and you can make it happen. I know that some of you are thinking “Simple . . . . coding. . . !?” while making this face, but it’s true. Just follow the steps below and you’ll make it happen.

Before we jump into the how, or what it looks like, a few notes:

Only Editors will be able to see the popup. In my testing, someone who is “can view” or “can comment” does not see the popup. Also, they have to be explicitly shared as editors, not just “anyone with the link can edit.”
If you copy the document within your own account, the popup will appear on the copy as well.
If someone shared on the document makes a copy, the popup will NOT appear on their copy.
If you send the document out on Google Classroom as “Make a Copy for Each Student” it will NOT include the popup in those copies. I was bummed when I discovered this, because it would have been huge for teachers.

Now that you know those notes and limitations, let’s dive into it. First, an animated GIF of how to do it and then, below the GIF, the step by step with code that you can just copy and paste.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

From within your Google Doc, click on Tools > Script Editor.
Click on Untitled Project and rename the project.
Replace the words myFunction with onOpen. (This is what tells it to run automatically)
After the { type DocumentApp. (include the period)
From the menu that pops up select getUi : Ui
After {DocumentApp.getUi() type a period.
From the menu that pops up select alert(String prompt) : Button
In place of the word prompt type your popup message.
Add quotation marks around your message (and inside of the parentheses).
Click the save icon.
Go back to your Doc, refresh and check it out!

Another note: You can actually edit the appearance of the popup with some HTML and CSS coding, but that would take me longer to explain that 1 GIF can handle!

Credits: I learned this from one of Google’s Applied Digital Skills Courses in the “Code Welcome Screen” Activity. You can learn about adding some formatting to your popup in that course.

Customize the Numbers or Letters in a List in Google Docs

Educators use bulleted and numbered lists all of the time. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to customize those lists? Maybe instead of 1, 2, 3… you’d like Step 1, Step 2, Step 3… Well, you’re in luck. This is one of those features in Google Docs that many people may have never noticed was there. Right-click on a numbered list (or go to Formats > Bullets & Numbering > List Options) and you can modify the prefix and suffix of the numbers (or letters) in your list.

I can think of a few prefixes you may use – step, station, period, day, activity, option, choice, # – but I’d love to hear your ideas and uses! Finally, here’s an animated GIF of how it works:

Speech & Thought Bubbles in Google Drawings

On the Google Teacher Tribe podcast and on his site DitchThatTextbook.com, Matt Miller shared about his recommended use of thought bubbles (and speech bubbles) in Google Drawings. When I first heard it, I thought – “Whoa! What a simple, but powerful application of a technology tool.” Think about it: students being able to comprehend a story or historical event well enough to synthesize the information back into what they predict a character/person may have been thinking or saying? Not to mention, it’s quick and it’s much more engaging that writing it on a worksheet or in a Google Doc. Matt recommends this as a Bell Ringer activity, which I think is an awesome idea, but certainly not the only way it can be used. Teachers these days are incorporating kindergarten worksheets for kids to help them learn better.

This can also be done in Google Slides–it would be neat to have each kid have their own slide–and through the “Insert > Drawing” option on Google Docs. Just like with Google Docs, you can have students make copies of your drawing to add their own thought bubbles or you can use them as assignments in Google Classroom or other LMS’s.

Check it out in the Animated GIF below and then, after the GIF, is a published version of that Drawing, just to show how easy it is to post the completed project.

Continue reading Speech & Thought Bubbles in Google Drawings

5 Ways to Link to Parts of Google Docs

There are a lot of reasons that you may want to put links into a doc that allow you (or the reader) to jump to certain parts of a Google Doc. Here are a few possible reasons:

You’re creating a HyperDoc with lots of stuff in it!
Your students are creating eBooks and need a Table of Contents
You’re managing a long doc of lesson plans and want to be able to jump to different units or months
Your students are creating Choose Your Own Adventure books
You’re collaborating with a team of educators in a doc with multiple meetings worth of notes
A slightly different reason – sending a link in an email (or messaging system) that takes the recipient directly to a certain location within the doc

There are a few different ways to manage this and different ones are best in different situations. Let’s check them out!

1. Using “Headings” to create linkable pieces of text

When you use the “Styles” dropdown to format parts of your doc as Heading 1, Heading 2 or Heading 3 those Headings become links that even show up in the Insert Link menu. Check out the steps in the animated GIF below.

2. Copying the url for headings, titles & Subtitles

You may have noticed that in #1, I didn’t mention Titles or Subtitles along with the 3 different levels of Headings. This is because they don’t naturally appear in that Insert Link box. I’m not sure why. Regardless, if you add a title or subtitle (just like a heading) you’ll notice that when you click on them, the URL changes. This is because the URL is specific to that location in the doc. So, copy that URL and create a link with it elsewhere in the doc to jump to that spot. Check out how in the animation below.

Note: These URLs are nice outside of that doc as well. Let’s say a colleague asks you about a specific topic that was discussed in a faculty meeting a few weeks back. Copy the URL for the heading or title from that meeting and email it to them – then, when they click on that, not only will the doc open, but they’ll jump to the right spot.

3. Use Bookmarks

What if you don’t want to format some of your text as a “title” or “heading”? Well, bookmarks are the answer for you. In my school, we have a shared document for the plans for our “PRIDE” period, that all teachers teach. We use bookmarks to make it easy to jump by month. The biggest use of this that I can see, though, is to have students link to the locations of their evidence. Think about it: How do I know that the character is feeling remorseful? I can see evidence here when he says “sorry” and here when he is feeling depressed about what he did. Add links to the spots in that document where those events happened and you can see evidence of your students’ reading comprehension. *Boom!* Check out the process for adding bookmarks and using them for links in the animation below.

4. Insert Table of Contents

If you want there to be links to each chapter of your ebook (or dates of your lesson plan or agendas from your meeting…) up at the top of your document, the Table of Contents is a great solution for you. There are two main downsides of the Table of Contents. First,it doesn’t work with Titles or Subtitles. Second, the Table of Contents can become really long. But, if you want links to each of those Headings in the doc, this will be great for you, because it’s really simple to set up. Check it out:

5. Document Outline

The last option is convenient, but isn’t for creating links in the document itself. If your goal is just to be able to navigate the document quickly without concern for how other people navigate your document, the Document Outline is a great solution for you. Anything that you format as Title, Subtitle or Heading automatically goes into the Document Outline. An interesting tidbit is that it also adds things that look like headings to this list (i.e., something bold and underlined). Just remember: your document’s viewers only see the document outline if they go to View and turn it on themselves.