Suggestions: 12 Days of Techmas, Day 9

To celebrate the holiday season, I'll be sending out 12 Days of easy classroom tech ideas you can use right away! 

Day 9: Suggestions in Google Docs

Have you noticed the new way to edit/comment in Google Docs? It's called Suggesting mode, and it's perfect for teachers.

Suggesting mode allows you to type corrections into a student's document, but have those changes highlighted to make them obvious.

For example, in the picture below, you can see where I removed "HPS" and inserted "Holliston Public Schools." It automatically marked my changes in green, and automatically created a comment on the right to show the student what I did.




When the student reopens the document, she sees the changes in green as well as thecomment box on the side. It makes my suggestions really obvious, and she can accept the suggestion (to make the change permanent) or reject it.

This is especially good for minor edits such as grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc, that ought to be fixed but are neither complex nor the focus of the unit you are teaching. 

Bigger corrections ("You might want to restructure this sentence with active verbs.") would still be their own comment box.

To turn on Suggesting mode, click the pencil in the top right corner.


Cheers!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Google Drawings! 12 Days of Techmas, Day 10

Image
To celebrate the holiday season, I'll be sending out  12   Days  of easy classroom tech ideas you can use right away!   Weekend Edition! Day  10: Google Drawing A little used feature of the Google Apps system is  Google Drawings . I think this is because of its name: it  seems to imply free-hand drawing  on a computer, which may seem of limited use to most teachers. A Barely-Educational Example  (Keep reading for better examples!) However, free-hand is the  least  useful tool in Google Drawings. Where it really shines is in  free-layout text and shape drawing .  Google Drawings is  perfect for making concept maps and graphic organizers . You can make an organizer and share it with your students, or they make make their own.   Maybe these examples I whipped up might seem more educational: Concept Map about Fine Arts [Ironically, the ...
Read more

17 Classroom Tricks for your Whiteboard, Projector, and Doc Camera

Image
The combination of whiteboards, projectors, and document cameras is more powerful than many teachers realize. In the hectic rush of our everyday teaching, it's too easy to fall back on using these powerhouse tools as little more than digital overhead projectors.  So, here's what I call some "mini-tricks" to get more out of your whiteboard setup! Take a picture!  Your document camera is great for taking a snapshot of that worksheet you are projecting.  Many have a snapshot button right on the case; others use a little software program (ELMOs use ImageMate). Take lots of pictures! Are you presenting your notes via the document camera?  Take a quick picture for every page.  You can upload the pictures to Google Drive, DropBox, or Moodle, and share them with your students. Take video!  Most document cameras have an adjustable lens that can face horizontally.  It is a snap to record snapshots or videos of your students with the camera's software...
Read more

Take Your Google Docs With You Before You Graduate

Image
Taking Your Google Data With You Before You Graduate:   Google Takeout Students who use Google Apps in school can amass a large number of docs, presentations, etc, representing a huge amount of academic work. Because these docs are stored in the cloud, you could lose them when your school deactivates your account after you graduate.  Fear not! Google Takeout lets you download and save all of the Google Drive and Gmail data that your created when you were in school. Go to https://www.google.com/settings/takeout . If prompted, sign in with your school Google Account. . Scroll down and turn OFF the data that you do NOT need to save. This is up to you. You know best which services you used and need to archive. NOTE: There are limits to the number of times you can archive your data, so choose wisely the first time. Click Next . Leave “File type” and “Delivery method” unchanged and click “ Create archive .” When archiving is done, you will see a screen like...
Read more