5 Features to Try in Google Docs

New features for Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. Google is always coming out with new things to help you with teaching and learning. Check out the 5 new features for September 2023.
New features for Google Docs

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5 Features to Try in Google Docs

Google Docs and Google Apps are familiar tools for many teachers, but are you truly harnessing their full potential? These platforms offer a wealth of features that go beyond basic word processing and data organization. By delving deeper into their capabilities, you can unlock new ways to engage students, streamline your workflow, and foster a more dynamic learning environment. Let’s explore five powerful features that you might have overlooked.

5 Features to Try

Keep reading for information on 

  • Timer Chips in Google Docs (Education Plus)
  • Search the Menus
  • Pen Tool in Google Slides Presentations
  • Emojis and Smart Chips in Google Sheets
  • Hyperlinked Text in Google Forms

Google for Education Workspace Options

Google Workspace for Education offers a range of options tailored to the needs of different educational institutions. The foundational tier, Education Fundamentals, is available at no cost and provides access to core Google services like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

For schools seeking enhanced security and administrative controls, Education Standard offers a premium upgrade. To further enrich the learning experience, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade adds specialized tools for educators and students. 

Some Features Are Premium

While it is nice to have free tools, engineers are expensive. If we want our tools to be available long term we need to consider how to make them sustainable. One of the ways Google makes it sustainable to offer Google Classroom and other features is to have paid tiers. 

Features Available for All Google Workspace for Education Users

Feature Description
Timer Chips Embed timers directly into Google Docs to help students manage their time during assignments. (Or use FigJam as a free alternative.)
Search the Menus Quickly find the function you need by searching the toolbar instead of navigating through menus.
Pen Tool in Google Slides Annotate slides in real-time during presentations for a more interactive and engaging experience.
Emojis and Smart Chips Enhance Google Sheets with emojis and interactive elements like timers, calendars, and YouTube videos.
Hyperlinked Text in Forms Create more visually appealing and user-friendly Google Forms by adding hyperlinks, bold text, and underlines.

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Teaching and Learning Upgrade Features

Feature Description
Originality reports Easily check student work for plagiarism and ensure academic integrity.
Rubric creation Create custom rubrics to assess student work more effectively and provide targeted feedback.
Classroom add-ons Integrate your favorite tools and content directly into Google Classroom.
Unlimited originality reports Access unlimited originality reports to check for plagiarism across all student work.
Peer matching Compare student work against a private repository of past student submissions to identify potential instances of plagiarism.

Education Plus Features

Feature Description
Enhanced video communication Improved video conferencing capabilities with features like noise cancellation, breakout rooms, Q&A, polls, and live captions.
Advanced security Additional security measures, such as enhanced phishing and malware protection, data loss prevention, and security center.
Expanded storage Increased storage capacity for emails, documents, and other files (100GB per user).

1. Timer Chips in Google Docs

Helping students to pace their time on any particular part of a question can be very handy. For schools that have the highest tier access, Education Plus, teachers can add a Timer smart chip to the assignment document. “Click the timer and free write for 10 minutes.” This allows for significantly more flexibility than all students writing for the same 10 minutes. 

Start typing @timer in the Google Doc to add the timer.

Learn More about Google Docs from Teacher Tech

2. Search the Menus

You will notice the toolbar in your Docs, Sheets, and Slides have changed. The first icon in the toolbar is now a magnifying glass. Instead of clicking on the different menus, get in the habit of searching for what you are thinking of. With a little practice it will be a lot faster to search for Title Case using the magnifying glass rather than digging down in the Format menu.

Screenshot of Google Docs with search the menus highlighted

 

3. Pen Tool While Presenting in Google Slides

I was using Google Slides to guide an activity on Emoji Sampling. My Google Slides slide had a table on it that was blank with the intention of recording from the class what they inferred about the population parameters from their sample statistics. Wanting to be interactive with my class I needed the ability to fill in the table while in presentation mode of Google Slides.

Google Slides Presentation mode now has a Pen option.

While in Presentation mode, or even Publish to the Web mode, hover over the bottom left corner. Click on the 3 dots to select “Turn on pen.”

Nonsensically, the keyboard shortcut to activate the pen is Shift L. (Note that Shift P does nothing.)

Shift L keyboard shortcut
Image of the menu options in Google Slides when
Note that the pen strokes do NOT save after exiting slideshow.

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4. Add Emojis to Google Sheets

While cool that you can more easily add Emoji’s to Google Sheets, this update is really about being able to “at” (@) in the spreadsheet.

This will give you options to add smart chips to your Google Sheets. ONE of the options when you “at” with the @ is the ability to choose “Emoji.”

 

5. Hyperlink Text in Google Forms

This one is so exciting, I can now hyperlink text, bold, and underline in Google Forms. I’ve been using this a lot. Keyboard shortcuts of Control K and Control B work!

Screenshot from Google Forms showing the text is formatted.

 

New Features in Google Docs and Workspace

These are just a few of the new features that are available in Google Docs. Then, with new features being added all the time, Google Docs is becoming increasingly powerful and versatile, making it a great choice for word processing needs of all kinds.

New features for Google Docs are making the software even more powerful and versatile, and there are many new features to look forward to using in the future.

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