G-Suite Updates of Awesomeness!

Bonus Post! Focus: G-Suite for Education Updates

Great googly-moogly, there are some amazing updates to G Suite recently and I wanted to make sure you knew all about them! Here are some short overviews of new releases or updates.

Image acquired from: All Saints Catholic School

Team Drive

First things first, those of you that use your Google Drive via the web view have probably noticed the new Team Drive option that appeared in your Drive this week.

A Team Drive is a shared space where: A Team Drive would be a great place for a curriculum team or grade level team to house their work as it is in progress or when it is ready to share. Members of a Team Drive share ownership of any files and folders. If someone leaves the Team Drive, any files they added will stay. You can still share files with a link or invite. To Create/Use a “Team Drive” Click on the “Team Drive” Icon Click on the blue “New Button” Give your “Team Drive” a name Double click on your newly created team drive and click the “+Add members” link and add your prefered team members. Make sure to give them the correct access permissions by clicking the down arrow under the “Add Names” line. To add items or create items in your Team Drive, use the “New” button as you would when you are adding anything to your personal drive.

Google Slides and Videos

Now, let’s talk about about Google Slides and Videos. In the past, you have only been able to embed a YouTube video into your Slides presentation. This new update allows you to embed any video that you have housed in your Google Drive directly into your presentation instead of creating it as an external link. If you have used a video creation program like Screencastify, WeVideo, Animoto, or any other program where you can create and save a video file into your Google Drive, you can now embed and play the video right in a Slide.

1. Create your video and save it in your Google Drive. The best format is usually an MP4 file type.
2. Create the Slide and insert the video - follow these easy steps - video link
3. You can right click on the video for autoplay or cropping options.

Forms Allow for Document Uploads

You can now create a question in Forms that allows you to have respondents upload a file as their response. All files uploaded as a response will be placed in the Form owners Google Drive for easy access.  You can even select the file type, size, and the number of files that the respondent can upload for you. Here is a quick video that shows you the process - video

Google Keep integrates with G Suite apps

Google Keep is a note taking/keeping app that has been often overlooked. At its most basic, it is a tool that you can use to create lists. If you want to use it in a more robust fashion, you can create notes with images, links and videos that can then be shared with any of your other Googly friends in the same way that you can share a Doc, Form, Slide, etc. There is even a handwriting tool for those of you who like to keep handwritten notes or doodles.

Keep is now fully integrated with Google Docs. When you open Keep as a tool in Docs , it becomes a bar running on the right side of your screen. You can click and drag any of your notes onto your Doc or you can copy and paste into any comments that you create. Watch this to see an example of how it works: video

Here is an excellent article by one of my favorite bloggers, Eric Curts. This article gives step-by-step directions on how to create Notes in Keep and then how to use this feature to save time when you are giving student feedback on Google Docs.  

Hopefully you found something valuable in these updates! Forest Hills educators, contact your DLS for further assistance. All others, feel free to use the comments sections to share your thoughts and ideas.

Contributed by Melanie Zolnier @libary_techer