Week 8 Tech Showcase - G Suite Productivity Apps

G Suite

G Suite is Google's full range of productivity apps based in the cloud that allow you to connect, access, and create. Clicking on each app name will direct you to the G Suite Learning Center for that product.

With G Suite, you can connect by utilizing Gmail, Google Calendar, and Hangouts Chat, and Hangouts Meet.

• Gmail

Gmail allows you to be updated with secure, private, and ad-free email. In addition, Gmail keeps you updated with real-time message notifications, and safely stores your important emails and data.

• Google Calendar

Google Calendar allows you to set up events on a cloud based calendar, and it is integrated seamlessly with Gmail, Drive, Contacts, Sites and Hangouts. You can also schedule events quickly by checking coworkers' availability or layering their calendars in a single view. You can share calendars so people see full event details or just if you are free.

• Hangouts Chat

 

Hangouts Chat is an instant messaging solution that allows for communication either with one person or an entire group. It also features bots that can integrate other Google features such as Google Calendar and Google Drive as shown in the following image.

• Hangouts Meet

Hangouts Meet is a video conferencing solution that will be covered in next week's Tech Showcase.

• Google Drive

G Suite also allows you to utilize cloud storage using Google Drive. G Suite allows you to have unlimited Google Drive cloud storage. This means you can store, access, and share your files in one secure place. You have the ability to access files anytime, anywhere from your desktop and mobile devices. Google Drive is especially useful for using less space on your device.

Additionally, you can create Team Drives which foster collaboration by allowing a shared drive where multiple people can upload files.

With G Suite, you can also create Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Forms. These programs are Google's word processor, presentation, and spreadsheet programs.

• Google Docs

Google Docs allows you to create and edit text documents right in your browser with no dedicated software required. Multiple people can work at the same time, and every change/revision is saved automatically. It also allows you export to other file types such MS Word, PDF, etc. It can also convert Word files to Docs.

• Google Slides

Google Slides allows you to create and edit presentations in your browser with no software required. Multiple people can work at the same time, and every change/revision is saved automatically. It also allows you export to other file types such PPT, PDF, etc. It can also convert PPT files to Slides.

• Google Sheets

Google Sheets allows you to create and edit spreadsheets in your browser with no software required.
Multiple people can work at the same time, and every change/revision is saved automatically. It also allows you export to other file types such Excel, PDF, etc. It can also convert Excel files to Sheets.

• Google Forms

Google Forms allows you to easily create forms for surveys and questionnaires. Responses can be tracked from Google Forms as well as Google Sheets where it is integrated seamlessly.

We are interested in your feedback, please take a few moments to complete the following G Suite Productivity Apps Survey

COMPLETED - Brief Emergency Maintenance at 7:00 PM on Production Banner Forms (INB)

ITS will be performing emergency maintenance starting at 7:00 PM this evening. Production Banner Forms will be unavailable for approximately 15-30 minutes while the maintenance is performed.

The maintenance is to put a patch into production that fixes an issue with the latest version of Java.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

- - - - -

Updated at 7:17 PM:

The maintenance has been completed. Production Banner Forms are back online.

Head Back to School with Drive: Student Edition

Summer has come to an end, which for college students usually means the end of a grueling internship, a road-trip or getting moved back to campus, embracing friends you have not seen in months, and, oh yeah, that other tiny detail: the start of classes.

With so much else going on — friends, extracurriculars, sports — students today need to be as efficient and productive as possible when they dedicate time to studying and doing homework. In this age of internet transformation, Gen Y is more tech savvy than ever before, and we expect online education to meet our technology standards.

The purpose (and hope) of this blog post is to give a few examples of how I used — and benefitted from — Google Docs, Slides, and Forms in college.

Example 1: Have a group project? Stay calm, cool, and collected. Docs make collaboration easy!

If you have ever had to work on a group paper or project, you know how cumbersome and inefficient the process can be. There are two ways to go about accomplishing this task: (1) your group sends 173 emails trying to coordinate a time at which everyone is available to meet or (2) each person writes a portion of the paper and the group tries to synthesize uncoordinated chunks of different writing styles into one cohesive paper, which always ends with one Type A student editing the entire thing. Luckily, there is now an option 3, and it’s called Google Docs.

To start using Docs, just open a doc, share it with the group members, and write. It’s that simple. Having the ability to work together in the cloud means no coordinating schedules, no wasting time on multiple revisions, and no unequal division of group member contributions.

For example, when I had to complete a group paper for an Economics class, my two groupmates and I decided we would each write one-third of the paper. We put our respective portions into a single document and then went through each other’s writing, adding comments and correcting errors when necessary.

Example 2: Google Slides. Enough Said.

Presentations are an inevitable college assignment. Whether you are a history or physics major, you cannot escape this task. Before using Slides, the process of creating presentations was inefficient, awkward (so...what should we put on this slide…?) and time-consuming.

For one of my physics laboratory experiments, my partner was an exchange student from France. While we understood each other in the lab by scribbling Greek letters and numbers to solve problems, at times it was difficult to communicate since English wasn’t her first language. So when we had to create our presentation, it sounded like a grueling task for both of us.

We decided to use Slides, divide the work, add notes, and edit together from within the presentation. Our communication was clear and efficient when we typed comments to each other since we could take our time to be articulate, which virtually dissolved our language barrier. In the end, creating the presentation was quite enjoyable; we were proud of the final product and our professors were impressed by how well we worked together.

Example 3: Using Forms to organize information and make it universally accessible and useful...sound familiar?

Being a full-time student and an active member of an extracurricular activity (sport, club, fraternity/sorority, etc.) can sometimes feel like a full-time job. It requires teamwork, organization, time-management, and dedication.

Being the leader of a group demands more: writing agendas, scheduling meetings, organizing fundraisers, and sticking to a budget. Keeping track of all of these items can be difficult, as each task requires different resources — email, documents, spreadsheets, polls, and more.

As the house president of a 165-student residence hall for two years, I struggled to keep track of it all, but after switching to Forms, the whole process became seamless.

For our fundraiser, my house sold over 300 t-shirts to the student body. Because of the high quantity, we utilized a pre-order process in which students could order their size/color and pay in advance. Before we had Google Forms, we used a paper form to collect pre-orders (I still try to block out all those hours spent inputting the paper orders into my computer!).

Not only did using a form make it easier to collect pre-orders, it also made it easier to distribute the order form. As a result, our pre-orders increased by 40% in one year! The form did all of the heavy lifting for me. Orders were seamlessly filed into a spreadsheet, and I simply had to click “Show summary of responses” to place the order, making my job easier and freeing up time so that I could focus on other aspects of my role as a leader.

So there you have it, three examples of how using Docs, Slides, and Forms in college made me more efficient, saved me time, and increased my productivity. For those of you about to begin a new semester, good luck!
Partially reposted from the Google Drive Blog: http://googledrive.blogspot.com
Originally posted by  Alex Nagourney is a 2013 graduate of Wellesley College. She was a 2011 Google BOLD intern and a Google Student Ambassador from 2011-2013 - https://drive.googleblog.com/2013/08/drivebts-students.html

Head Back to School with Drive: Teacher Edition

Here are 3 tips to help teachers prepare for going back to school with Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms.

1. Use Slides to get to know your students

A great introductory activity is to create a single slide deck, and then invite each of your students to share a bit about themselves on their own personal slide. It’s a fantastic get-to-know-you activity for the beginning of school and you’ll be amazed by the creativity that comes out of your students!

The screenshot below shows how Google Student Ambassadors from 9 different countries used Slides to introduce themselves before gathering to meet each other at an event in Indonesia this summer.

Want to get this going with your students? Easy—create a new Slides deck on the first week of school, click the blue Share button to invite your students, and give them a little direction for their individual slide by adding comments.

2. Use Docs to create a classroom “Bill of Rights”

The first few weeks of class is that precious transition from the “honeymoon” period of well behaved students to learning the norms of your classroom culture. Help start the year off right by inviting students to co-create their ideas of citizenship and a happy learning environment, Docs style.

Start by creating a copy of this template and then invite students to join in with you to add their ideas, ratify by adding a comment, and use their editing prowess to come up with a final copy to live by for the coming year.

3. Use Forms to get to know your students (and their prior knowledge!)

Get to know your classroom as soon as possible, using Forms to gather information about their needs, interests, and abilities beforehand. Consider creating a simple Form for a survey for your students and have fun showing the data on your projector and learning about your class as a whole.

Forms can be used as a very quick getting started activity before any lesson as well—take this example from a social studies classroom before talking about population. By placing a quick Form on your classroom site or emailing your students the Form, you can quickly grasp your students' prior knowledge—before you start teaching.

In this case, our team was a bit off, but helped us not only talk about population but estimation and numbers in general (answer? 7.1 billion and counting. )

Partially reposted from the Google Drive Blog: http://googledrive.blogspot.com
Originally posted by  Wendy Gorton, an educational consultant- https://drive.googleblog.com/2013/08/drivebts-teachers.html