December 2021 – Page 2 – Craig M Sheil

2021 – Day 5 of Google – YouTube

On the fifth day of Google, we will take a look into YouTube. Some of the features below are not necessarily all new ideas but ideas that are worth taking a second look at.

PLAYBACK SPEED

Ever in a situation where you want to speed through a video? Consider changing the speed by which it is played. Perhaps you are running out of time or you feel like you can get more out of the material if it is sped up. I find myself doing this more and more. If I see a video or webinar that I want to watch, and I see that it is 30 or more minutes, I will change the speed of the video.

Select the gear on the bottom of a YouTube video and change the playback speed to a faster speed. My suggestion is watching at 1.5 speed.

2021 – Day 3 of Google – Calendar

On Day 3 of Google, we will take a look at Google Calendar. Perhaps some of these features can help streamline your workflow.

MEETING NOTES

When organizing a meeting, you now have the ability as the owner to initiate meeting notes. What I like about this, is that the file is named the name of the calendar invite. It also automatically creates a space for attendees to add notes as well as action items (that can then be crossed off once completed).

If you forget to add meeting notes, you have the ability to edit your calendar event and add it after the fact. All attendees to the calendar invite have access to the file as well as editing access.

To add meeting notes, select the ‘create meeting notes’ button in the meeting description section.

2021 – Day 4 of Google – Google Slides

On the fourth day of Google, we will dive into a couple of tips in Google Slides. Did you know…

CREATE YOUR OWN GRADIENT COLORS

Did you know that you could create your gradient colors? I actually didn’t until a week ago. There might be times where you want to have multiple colors show up in text. To make this happen,

Insert a word art cell with your text
While text is selected, click the fill paint bucket icon
Under the gradient menu, select the icon to create your own color
Select the color you want to start with. You will then add a new gradient stop color. Repeat this step as many times as you want with the number of colors you will want to appear.
You can determine the type of gradient from linear to radial.

In the example below, you will see that a rainbow effect was created. You don’t need to select all of the gradient stops that I selected. You could keep it simple and only have one gradient stop.

This is something that you won’t use all the time. For me, this was a huh moment as I didn’t know it existed. When the right time comes, I will be sure to use the feature however.

2021 – Day 2 of Google – Google Docs

On our second day of Google, we will focus on Google Docs. There have been many aha moments in Docs lately. Let’s jump right into it. Did you know…

WATER MARKS

You now have the ability to add a water mark in the document. I remember the days of Word, where a file was shared and I immediately knew it was in draft format as the word DRAFT was written diagonally in the background. It was faded but it was clear that things were not set in stone.

For those that are looking for some sort of visual faded in the background, follow the steps below. You will see in the example below, our school logo was added. I had the ability to determine whether it should be faded or not, as well as what I want the scale of the image to be.

Under insert menu, select Watermark
Select the image box on the right column and find the image you want to upload
Determine scale and if you want it to appear faded

2021 – Day 1 of Google – Chrome

On our first day, we will take a deeper dive into some features of Google Chrome. I must say for myself, there were several “I didn’t know you could do that moments” for me.

AUTOFILL

First thing we will talk about is your own settings in chrome. I think it is a great time to remind people about things that have been saved under your account. Some users save their passwords on websites that they use. It can be a risky thing to do. If you don’t remember what websites you have saved passwords for, or you no longer want to grant access to saved passwords, or you didn’t know you even save a password for a paricular tool/website…have no fear. You can see and make changes, by:

Selecting the three dots on top right corner of chrome
Choose Settings
Select Autofill on left column
Select Passwords

In a similar fashion, check to see if you have any saved payment methods. You might not want websites to have your saved credit card information or better yet, any saved financial data on your school google account.

HIGHLIGHT TEXT and SHARE

Did you know you can direct students to particular text on a webpage? This was a learning moment for me! Yes, you have the ability to draw attention to a certain part of a website for students so that they don’t get distracted. How to make this happen?

Highlight the section you want students to read or pay attention to
Right click
Select “copy link to highlight”
Then provide link to students

The gif below will walk you through the process.

HIGHLIGHT TEXT and SAVE IN GOOGLE KEEP

In a similar fashion, I have been seeing people talk about how they have students use Google Keep for note taking purposes. As students are doing research online with certain websites, they can highlight information that they want to keep. Once the text is highlighted, they can select the Google Keep chrome extension. Students will notice that the link is already added to the keep note, as well as the text that was highlighted. Students can add a title to the note, as well as type any other text they want to add. Students would then provide a tag to the note so that they can go back to all of the information they found useful in their research under that particular tag. Student would go to keep.google.com, search that tag they decided to use, to see all of their notes. Clever. In fact, very clever.

Below is a gif walking through the process of how to use the keep chrome extension.

And that is my Spiel…