Originally posted on the Google Cloud Blog by Greg Brosman, Product Manager, G Suite Marketplace
Starting today, we're making it possible for you to access all of your favorite G Suite extensions in one place by bringing add-ons and web apps from the Chrome Web Store into the G Suite Marketplace.
If you're not familiar with the G Suite Marketplace, it's the app store for G Suite. Whether you want to boost your productivity, take control of your calendar or do more from within your inbox, you can browse more than a thousand options to customize how you work in G Suite. IT admins also have the ability to manage access and controls of apps from within the G Suite Marketplace—like whitelisting app access for users or installing an app for an entire domain (read more about best practices here). If you're an admin, you can access the marketplace from within the Admin console (Go to Tools > G Suite Marketplace).
How to migrate existing apps if you're a developer
Going forward, new G Suite extensions will be listed only on the G Suite Marketplace to make it easier for you to manage your listings. This includes all G Suite apps with add-ons, like Docs, Sheets and Drive. If you have existing apps listed on the Chrome Web Store, you'll have 90 days to migrate them. Here are specific instructions for editor add-ons, Drive v3 apps, and Drive v2 apps to get that process started. Ratings and reviews will be included in the migration, and existing users will continue to be able to use their apps.
We look forward to seeing your apps on G Suite Marketplace!
Editor’s note: Before joining Google’s Education team, Morgan Weisman was a kindergarten teacher. Today she is sharing how one of her students inspired her to help build products that aim to meet the needs of all types of learners.
The first time I met six-year-old Jeremiah, he clung to his mom’s leg as he peeked into my kindergarten classroom. Soon he came alive as he talked about his favorite superhero: Spiderman. He ran around the colorful classroom, touched everything in sight and chatted aimlessly. However, when he realized my attention had shifted to his mom, he threw himself on the floor in a tantrum. That’s when his mom told me that they suspected he had autism, but were hopeful that the routine of school would help him focus.
This began a year long journey of giving Jeremiah the educational support he needed, while also teaching 24 other students with 24 different learning styles. Seventy-two percent of classrooms have special education students, and teachers have to work to keep them all engaged and invested in school. For me, I leveraged technology to create differentiated lessons and support each student, especially Jeremiah.
Jeremiah lit up when he had a computer in front of him and headphones on. He could listen, engage and learn without distractions. We had him fitted for glasses, and he learned how to use the screen magnifier to make the words pop on his screen. He learned sight words, numbers and simple addition through songs and videos. Best of all, his social skills developed as he learned to share and take turns with devices.
As I learned what worked for Jeremiah, I started using the same strategies with other students. As my instructional coach used to tell me: “What works for kids with special needs works for everyone. The strategies that work, just work.”
Since joining Google, I’ve seen even more ways that educators use technology to help students succeed. We strive to support teachers, and one of the ways we are doing that is through built-in accessibility features in our products that aim to support the diverse needs of all students.
My students on kindergarten graduation day... all decked out in gear from my alma mater, our class' theme.
The ABC’s of Chromebook accessibility
Accessibility settings are built in to all Chromebooks, and more are available through Chrome extensions and apps. No need to change settings when you switch devices because they sync to each student by default. Here are a few useful accessibility settings to get you started:
Visual aids:Increase the size of browser content by pressing Ctrl + Plus to increase, Ctrl + Minus to decrease, Ctrl + 0 to reset. The rest of the desktop is unaffected. You can enable high contrast mode by pressing Ctrl + Search button + H on the Chromebook keyboard. Adjust your font face and size, and install Chrome extensions for custom color support.
Mono Audio:For users who have limited hearing in one ear, there's a Mono Audio option to play the same sound through both speakers. Turn this feature on in Accessibility settings.
Spoken feedback: For users who need synthesized speech on occasion, we offer Select-to-speak. When enabled, press and hold the Search key, then click or drag to select content to be read aloud, and press Ctrl to silence. Change the word-by-word highlight color in Select-to-speak settings. We also have the ChromeVox screen reader that reads all text aloud, a free, browser-based screen reader that users can access from any device and built directly for ChromeOS.
Acapela text-to-speech voices: Now you can purchase and use more than 100 Acapela voices to read aloud text in 30+ languages on Chromebooks, including a variety of childrens’ voices.
The 123’s of G Suite Accessibility
G Suite is a set of tools that help students and teachers collaborate in real time and give personalized feedback. It’s also paperless and accessible from anywhere. Built into our G Suite tools are many accessibility features:
Slides: Turn on closed captions in Slides to support students who are deaf, hard-of-hearing or ENL. Simply use Ctrl + Shift + c in ChromeOS/Windows or⌘ + Shift + c in Mac.
Voice typing, editing and formatting: Use the mic and enable the feature to use voice typing in Docs and Slides to write and edit without a keyboard.
Visual aids:Enable high contrast themes in Gmail and browsing, and use powerful keyboard shortcuts for those who can’t or don’t want to use a mouse.
Collaboration:G Suite works on all different platforms including Windows, Android, iOS devices and even multiple devices at one time. You can all be on different devices and still collaborate in real time.
Braille: Use a Braille display to read and edit Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drawings.
Screen reader & magnifier:Turn on the features in accessibility settings to zoom in or use the screen reader in Docs, Calendar, Sites, Classroom and even in other browsers.
What else is new?
We’re supporting teachers through our own tools as well as strong partnerships with organizations who share our mission. One such organization is Don Johnston, a company that builds tools for people with all types of learning styles and abilities. We’re excited to announce them as a Google for Education Premier Technology Partner, with new integrations using our Drive API, Classroom API and Google single sign-on. Try out their core products in Chrome, Co:Writer, for word prediction, translation, and speech recognition, Snap&Read for screen reading, & their newest product, automatic quiz generator Quizbot with Google Forms. See how one Indiana teacher uses Chromebooks and Don Johnston tools to improve reading independence in her classroom.
Ready to make your teaching more accessible for all learners?
We have many resources to find out what’s new, and how to turn on and use features included in our Chrome browser, Chromebook settings, and G Suite products:
At Google for Education, we're passionate about building tools that make teaching and learning better for everyone. We love hearing stories of how technology is changing students’ lives, so please share ways that you’re using accessibility tools to support all types of learners.
How many times have you worked in a document only to realize halfway through that you’re editing an outdated version? Beyond being frustrating, this can cause confusion and slow down your project. One of the great things about working in cloud-native tools like G Suite is that everything is automatically saved. You never have to worry if you’re working on the most up-to-date version of a document because your apps do that for you.
But for the times that you need to go back and see changes, it’s simple. Go to File > Version history > See version history and view a complete list of changes to your document in one place. You can restore previous versions of a document there, too.
Another trick is to simply click the text at the top of your navigation bar that says “last edit was…” or “all changes saved” in Google Docs. If you hover over that text, it will actually tell you what the last change to the document was and who made it. Or if you’re returning to a document, you can click “See new changes” and the Doc will highlight edits that have been made since your last visit.
Read on for more tips on how to keep track of work in G Suite.
Take it a step further
Beyond viewing versions, there are other cool things you can do to keep track of work in G Suite. You can:
1. Make copies of specific versions.
This is great for sharing “before” and “after” versions of your work with your boss. You can make copies of specific versions within version history. Click the three dot icon next to your selected version and choose “make a copy” to have a second record.
2. Name specific versions of your work.
In version history, you can keep track of your work by naming individual versions in your list. Because all of your changes are saved in the cloud, it’s easy to go back and change version names instead of having ten different versions of a “Final” document floating in email threads. Bonus points for creative names!
3. See who’s viewed your work and when.
If you’ve ever wondered who specifically has looked at your work, there’s a way for you to view activity within Google Docs, Sheets or Slides. Those folks who use paid versions can go to Tools > Activity dashboard and see detail about the number of people reviewing their document, who specifically has reviewed and viewership trends. If you want to get there quicker, you can use this keyboard shortcut to see the activity dashboard: Ctrl + Alt/Option + T, then click Z.
4. Set up notifications to see when changes are made in Sheets.
If you’re working in a spreadsheet to track a project, you may want to see regular updates for when changes are made. You can set up notifications to alert you of changes immediately after someone changes data in a cell. Select Tools > Notification rules and choose the settings you prefer.
Don’t let version issues slow down your work. Use these tips to maneuver past mix-ups.
How many times have you worked in a document only to realize halfway through that you’re editing an outdated version? Beyond being frustrating, this can cause confusion and slow down your project. One of the great things about working in cloud-native tools like G Suite is that everything is automatically saved. You never have to worry if you’re working on the most up-to-date version of a document because your apps do that for you.
But for the times that you need to go back and see changes, it’s simple. Go to File > Version history > See version history and view a complete list of changes to your document in one place. You can restore previous versions of a document there, too.
Another trick is to simply click the text at the top of your navigation bar that says “last edit was…” or “all changes saved” in Google Docs. If you hover over that text, it will actually tell you what the last change to the document was and who made it. Or if you’re returning to a document, you can click “See new changes” and the Doc will highlight edits that have been made since your last visit.
Read on for more tips on how to keep track of work in G Suite.
Take it a step further
Beyond viewing versions, there are other cool things you can do to keep track of work in G Suite. You can:
1. Make copies of specific versions.
This is great for sharing “before” and “after” versions of your work with your boss. You can make copies of specific versions within version history. Click the three dot icon next to your selected version and choose “make a copy” to have a second record.
2. Name specific versions of your work.
In version history, you can keep track of your work by naming individual versions in your list. Because all of your changes are saved in the cloud, it’s easy to go back and change version names instead of having ten different versions of a “Final” document floating in email threads. Bonus points for creative names!
3. See who’s viewed your work and when.
If you’ve ever wondered who specifically has looked at your work, there’s a way for you to view activity within Google Docs, Sheets or Slides. Those folks who use paid versions can go to Tools > Activity dashboard and see detail about the number of people reviewing their document, who specifically has reviewed and viewership trends. If you want to get there quicker, you can use this keyboard shortcut to see the activity dashboard: Ctrl + Alt/Option + T, then click Z.
4. Set up notifications to see when changes are made in Sheets.
If you’re working in a spreadsheet to track a project, you may want to see regular updates for when changes are made. You can set up notifications to alert you of changes immediately after someone changes data in a cell. Select Tools > Notification rules and choose the settings you prefer.
Don’t let version issues slow down your work. Use these tips to maneuver past mix-ups.
It's October. Pencils—once sharp and eager to write in August—are starting to dull. Students are gazing out the window, and it's not just because of the falling leaves—this happens every October, when the newness of the new school year has worn off.
To fight this Octoberitis, some educators get students moving by doing a gravity experiment in the stairwell, or role play activities during history. While you’re experimenting in the classroom, we’ll be launching new tools to help you keep the learning spark alive, and make the longer days feel shorter.
And want to know something that’s made our October a bit brighter? We’re excited to announce that over 40 million students and educators are now using Google Classroom, and 30 million are using Chromebooks, on top of 80 million using G Suite for Education globally.
Bring the outside world into the classroom
Back when we learned with just pen and paper, math class and functions could seem dull. But now, augmented reality can add another dimension to your lesson. With the latest update to the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, it became the first ChromeOS device to support ARCore, Google’s platform for building augmented reality experiences. Developers can build AR experiences for classrooms, like GeoGebra, an interactive geometry, algebra, statistics and calculus app. Students can toggle between 2D screens and AR in the 3D app as teachers guide them in exploring math in new ways.
Using the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, educators can bring everything from a skeleton to the solar system into the classroom with the help of Expeditions AR. With content from partners like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Oxford University Press, the world comes to you when you can drop the works of Van Gogh into the middle of your Art History lesson, or a great Kapok tree when studying the rainforest. To unlock the power of AR, ask your IT administrator to enable these Android apps, and make sure your tablets are upgraded to the latest operating system.
To conduct a science experiment, the only equipment you’ll need is a Chromebook. Students can complete more than 40 science labs which map to high school biology, chemistry, and physics standards with Labster Chromebook labs. These online labs allow schools to offer unlimited lab practice time without needing to buy any extra equipment. Not only that, but these labs can also be assigned and graded with the Classroom integration, and teachers can track how students are progressing. To get labs at your school, visit labster.com/chromebooklabs.
Collaborate to reach every learner
You spend hours planning and customizing lessons to engage every learner in your class, but it can be difficult for students to follow along in rigorous and fast paced learning environments. To support students and faculty who are deaf or hard of hearing, we built closed captions in Google Slides (only available on Chrome web browsers), which uses machine learning to turn on automated closed captioning when presenting. Captions are currently available for U.S. English language only, but stay tuned as we explore adding more languages. Learn more about accessibility features in G Suite and ChromeOS.
We’ve launched new Docs updates to make writing a paper in MLA format a smoother process. You can already set left and right indentations as well as set hanging indents via a dialog box. Now, students and faculty can also adjust the margins of headers and footers, and use a vertical ruler to adjust placement of table rows and header and footer margins.
Educators can also give feedback to students in Classroom or Course Kit, our free toolkit that allows instructors to use G Suite within their existing LMS. Using the new grading tool, educators can leverage the comment bank to give feedback on Docs and PDFs. Use G Suite for Education but have a different LMS? Request access to the Course Kit beta today.
Jamboard - the collaborative whiteboard app - can also help shake things up. We’re bringing the jam to the web, where anyone can create and collaborate on jams from individual Chromebooks, no Jamboard hardware required. And with the new View Only mode, teachers can share jam sessions from their lessons that day while restricting edit access. Have a BYOD policy, or enabling Device Off Hours? Jamboard on the web is an easy solution for collaboration.
If you’re interested in trying out a Jamboard device in your classroom, you can apply for the new Jamboard Learning Space Transformation program. Continental U.S. based G Suite for Education customers can submit a proposal on how you’ll transform your learning space with Jamboard today.
Hopefully these new features and product tips are the antidote you need to the Octoberitis that’s bound to hit your classrooms. If not, you have Halloween to look forward to...
Be sure to follow along on Google for Education’s Twitter and Facebook pages. We love hearing from you, so please share your tips for the best October yet.
Educators rarely sit down. They’re walking around their classrooms to check in with students, guiding small groups, running after school clubs and leading field trips. And when they’re on the go, Classroom’s Android and iOS applications are there to help. We shared our World Teachers’ Day promise to continue to support and celebrate teachers, and that includes creating new features driven by educators’ feedback. Today, we’re sharing new tools and top tips from educators who teach us new ways to make the most of our mobile apps.
Introducing the student selector
Teachers are always inventing ways to encourage class participation, from popsicle sticks to notecards to assigning numbers to students. And now teachers can use the student selector on Android devices to randomly select students to call on in class. This ensures all students have a fair chance of speaking and sharing answers, and it helps teachers track who has participated and who hasn't.
We built the student selector specifically for mobile devices to take advantage of the portability of a phone or tablet.
Popular Classroom mobile features
We’ve heard many teachers tell us how much they use the Classroom mobile app when teaching, checking on classes and assignments outside of school, and how it enables them to be agile and respond when it’s convenient. For more ways to teach on the go, we asked educators to tell us the top three waysthey use the Classroom mobile apps in their classes:
1. Write feedback on work
On both the iOS and Android apps, students and teachers can easily draw and write on attachments. Chrystal Hoe, a tech integration coach, works with Math and English teachers in particular to leverage this feature. “Being able to circle or underline words or mistakes, especially when they’re repeated, makes it easy to give feedback to students.”
2. Record videos and take photos
Students and teachers can easily record and upload photos and videos to Classroom. Deanna Confredo, a high school social studies teacher, has been using Classroom for three years now to integrate photos and videos into her classes. “Some students prefer to use paper, and the mobile app allows me to collect work digitally while giving them some choice in how they want to complete their work. Students have the Classroom app on their phones, and they take a picture of their written work and upload it. ”
Deanna also has her students take photos to tie learning back to their own lives. “I was teaching how to test claims, so I asked my students to take a picture of a claim they saw - some of them took a picture of the news - and then upload it to Classroom. Then the next day, we talked about how we could test those claims and find evidence to support or refute them.”
3. Posting on the go
The mobility of smartphones means that teachers and students can post from wherever they are. Chrystal Hoe has found this to be especially useful for field trips. “We recently had a field trip with a scavenger hunt in a museum. We asked questions through Classroom and asked everyone to post a comment or turn in a picture to the Google Classroom Stream throughout the day. It was handy as we were hopping around town, and fun for everyone to see what everyone else was posting.”
The offline data built into our Classroom apps also means that teachers can edit and check classes regardless of location. Rachel Coathup, a head of digital curriculum, often takes advantage of this, especially during the parts of her day when a laptop is not easily accessible. “I find being able to get on my phone and quickly check that my classes are all set up for the following day to be very useful. And if I’m on the train, I can fix any assignments up and easily reuse posts from the different classes I teach.”
We love hearing from you
Share how you use smartphones and tablets with your students by tagging us in a tweet, and let us know how we can better support teaching on the go by sending in feedback directly in Classroom.
And if you and your students aren’t using the free Classroom mobile apps to enable learning on the go, you can download them now from Google Play Store or App Store.
Google turned the big 2-0 this past month. While the date is contested (who really wants to keep track of their age that closely anyway?), Google’s helped people across the world accomplish quite a bit over the past two decades. Here’s a snapshot. Or you can give yourself a tour of the original garage!
In the G Suite world, we kicked off Next Tokyo this month and launched new G Suite features as a part of it. We announced the beta version of Work Insights—a way for you to gain a deeper understanding of how employees use G Suite to collaborate in your organization. We also made the security investigation tool available to G Suite users to help businesses stay on top of security controls.
Did you know there is a Chrome extension that lets you search for Drive files from within your Google Search bar? It’s awesome. You can download the Chrome extension here.
→ Smart Compose is available in G Suite now. Type on.
→ If you’ve ever wished you could comment on a Microsoft file like you do in Google Docs (because it’s awesome), now you can if you save the file in Drive. Check out this demo to see how to comment on Word, Excel or PowerPoint files.
→ We’ve beefed up our conference capabilities with third-parties in Calendar. Now you can join meetings natively in Calendar through add-ons from Cisco, Dialpad, LogMeIn, RingCentral and Vonage instead of downloading a separate Chrome extension. One less step. (Or you can always use Hangouts Meet. ;)).
→ Speaking of Hangouts Meet, now up to 100,000 people can livestream meetings—great for global company-wide meetings or executive presentations.
→ The Google Sheets add-on for Salesforce is ready for use. It can help you import data and reports from Salesforce into Sheets, and push updates back to Salesforce. Read more.
→ We’re testing out a new feature for businesses in Drive called Priority Workspaces. It uses machine learning to help people find information quicker in Drive. Admins can apply for the beta here.
→ By popular demand, now you can edit jams from the web on Jamboard. We also added a new “view only” option.
Check out the full recap of product updates in September. Cheerio!
Google turned the big 2-0 this past month. While the date is contested (who really wants to keep track of their age that closely anyway?), Google’s helped people across the world accomplish quite a bit over the past two decades. Here’s a snapshot. Or you can give yourself a tour of the original garage!
In the G Suite world, we kicked off Next Tokyo this month and launched new G Suite features as a part of it. We announced the beta version of Work Insights—a way for you to gain a deeper understanding of how employees use G Suite to collaborate in your organization. We also made the security investigation tool available to G Suite users to help businesses stay on top of security controls.
Did you know there is a Chrome extension that lets you search for Drive files from within your Google Search bar? It’s awesome. You can download the Chrome extension here.
→ Smart Compose is available in G Suite now. Type on.
→ If you’ve ever wished you could comment on a Microsoft file like you do in Google Docs (because it’s awesome), now you can if you save the file in Drive. Check out this demo to see how to comment on Word, Excel or PowerPoint files.
→ We’ve beefed up our conference capabilities with third-parties in Calendar. Now you can join meetings natively in Calendar through add-ons from Cisco, Dialpad, LogMeIn, RingCentral and Vonage instead of downloading a separate Chrome extension. One less step. (Or you can always use Hangouts Meet. ;)).
→ Speaking of Hangouts Meet, now up to 100,000 people can livestream meetings—great for global company-wide meetings or executive presentations.
→ The Google Sheets add-on for Salesforce is ready for use. It can help you import data and reports from Salesforce into Sheets, and push updates back to Salesforce. Read more.
→ We’re testing out a new feature for businesses in Drive called Priority Workspaces. It uses machine learning to help people find information quicker in Drive. Admins can apply for the beta here.
→ By popular demand, now you can edit jams from the web on Jamboard. We also added a new “view only” option.
Check out the full recap of product updates in September. Cheerio!
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides infrastructure, serverless products, and APIs that help you build, innovate, and scale. G Suite provides a collection of productivity tools, developer APIs, extensibility frameworks and low-code platforms that let you integrate with G Suite applications, data, and users. While each solution is compelling on its own, users can get more power and flexibility by leveraging both together.
In the latest episode of the G Suite Dev Show, I'll show you one example of how you can take advantage of powerful GCP tools right from G Suite applications. BigQuery, for example, can help you surface valuable insight from massive amounts of data. However, regardless of "the tech" you use, you still have to justify and present your findings to management, right? You've already completed the big data analysis part, so why not go that final mile and tap into G Suite for its strengths? In the sample app covered in the video, we show you how to go from big data analysis all the way to an "exec-ready" presentation.
The sample application is meant to give you an idea of what's possible. While the video walks through the code a bit more, let's give all of you a high-level overview here. Google Apps Script is a G Suite serverless development platform that provides straightforward access to G Suite APIs as well as some GCP tools such as BigQuery. The first part of our app, the runQuery() function, issues a query to BigQuery from Apps Script then connects to Google Sheets to store the results into a new Sheet (note we left out CONSTANT variable definitions for brevity):
function runQuery() { // make BigQuery request var request = {query: BQ_QUERY}; var queryResults = BigQuery.Jobs.query(request, PROJECT_ID); var jobId = queryResults.jobReference.jobId; queryResults = BigQuery.Jobs.getQueryResults(PROJECT_ID, jobId); var rows = queryResults.rows;
// put results into a 2D array var data = new Array(rows.length); for (var i = 0; i < rows.length; i++) { var cols = rows[i].f; data[i] = new Array(cols.length); for (var j = 0; j < cols.length; j++) { data[i][j] = cols[j].v; } }
// put array data into new Sheet var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.create(QUERY_NAME); var sheet = spreadsheet.getActiveSheet(); var headers = queryResults.schema.fields; sheet.appendRow(headers); // header row sheet.getRange(START_ROW, START_COL, rows.length, headers.length).setValues(data);
// return Sheet object for later use return spreadsheet; }
It returns a handle to the new Google Sheet which we can then pass on to the next component: using Google Sheets to generate a Chart from the BigQuery data. Again leaving out the CONSTANTs, we have the 2nd part of our app, the createColumnChart() function:
function createColumnChart(spreadsheet) { // create & put chart on 1st Sheet var sheet = spreadsheet.getSheets()[0]; var chart = sheet.newChart() .setChartType(Charts.ChartType.COLUMN) .addRange(sheet.getRange(START_CELL + ':' + END_CELL)) .setPosition(START_ROW, START_COL, OFFSET, OFFSET) .build(); sheet.insertChart(chart);
// return Chart object for later use return chart; }
The chart is returned by createColumnChart() so we can use that plus the Sheets object to build the desired slide presentation from Apps Script with Google Slides in the 3rd part of our app, the createSlidePresentation() function:
function createSlidePresentation(spreadsheet, chart) { // create new deck & add title+subtitle var deck = SlidesApp.create(QUERY_NAME); var [title, subtitle] = deck.getSlides()[0].getPageElements(); title.asShape().getText().setText(QUERY_NAME); subtitle.asShape().getText().setText('via GCP and G Suite APIs:\n' + 'Google Apps Script, BigQuery, Sheets, Slides');
// add new slide and insert empty table var tableSlide = deck.appendSlide(SlidesApp.PredefinedLayout.BLANK); var sheetValues = spreadsheet.getSheets()[0].getRange( START_CELL + ':' + END_CELL).getValues(); var table = tableSlide.insertTable(sheetValues.length, sheetValues[0].length);
// populate table with data in Sheets for (var i = 0; i < sheetValues.length; i++) { for (var j = 0; j < sheetValues[0].length; j++) { table.getCell(i, j).getText().setText(String(sheetValues[i][j])); } }
// add new slide and add Sheets chart to it var chartSlide = deck.appendSlide(SlidesApp.PredefinedLayout.BLANK); chartSlide.insertSheetsChart(chart);
// return Presentation object for later use return deck; }
Finally, we need a driver application that calls all three one after another, the createColumnChart() function:
function createBigQueryPresentation() { var spreadsheet = runQuery(); var chart = createColumnChart(spreadsheet); var deck = createSlidePresentation(spreadsheet, chart); }
We left out some detail in the code above but hope this pseudocode helps kickstart your own project. Seeking a guided tutorial to building this app one step-at-a-time? Do our codelab at g.co/codelabs/bigquery-sheets-slides. Alternatively, go see all the code by hitting our GitHub repo at github.com/googlecodelabs/bigquery-sheets-slides. After executing the app successfully, you'll see the fruits of your big data analysis captured in a presentable way in a Google Slides deck:
This isn't the end of the story as this is just one example of how you can leverage both platforms from Google Cloud. In fact, this was one of two sample apps featured in our Cloud NEXT '18 session this summer exploring interoperability between GCP & G Suite which you can watch here:
Stay tuned as more examples are coming. We hope these videos plus the codelab inspire you to build on your own ideas.
This back to school season, inspire creativity, and run at maximum efficiency with the latest features and tools from Google for Education. We’re rolling out new features in Classroom and G Suite for Education, AR and VR on Chromebooks, Google Earth and Science Journal updates, and new trainings from the Teacher Center and Applied Digital Skills.
New tools in Classroom and G Suite
Google Classroom is getting its biggest refresh yet. We’ve added a Classwork page to help teachers and students stay more organized. With Classwork, teachers can easily group assignments into units or modules, and reorder work to match their class sequence. We’re also introducing a new grading tool, which lets educators quickly toggle between student submissions when grading, and save commonly used feedback. The tool improves the grading workflow, so that educators have more time to spend personalizing feedback. Finally, we’ve made it easier to setup classes and manage information. Read more here, and check out the Back to School 2018 FAQs for full details.
In addition to using a Learning Management System (LMS), many schools use G Suite to collaborate. Until now, there hasn’t been an easy way to integrate G Suite with many LMSs. That’s why we introduced Course Kit in July, a free toolkit that allows instructors to use Google Docs and Drive to collect assignments, give faster and richer feedback to students, and share course materials within the LMS they’re already using. It’s built using the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard so it's easy to set up and works with all LMSs that support LTI. If your institution uses G Suite for Education, you can get started by requesting access to the beta.
We heard from educators and students it can be challenging to format in Google Docs when writing and assigning papers. That’s why we’re sharing new Docs updates focused on margins and indentations to improve the overall writing experience, especially when making MLA style citations. Now, you can use hanging indents and set specific indentations using a dialog box. Be on the lookout for customizable header and footer margins, and a vertical ruler coming to Docs this fall.
Bring learning to life with Daydream, Google Earth, and Science Journal
Your student explorers can show and tell in 360-degree VR, because Tour Creator now allows photos taken on your own device with the free Cardboard Camera app (available on Android and iOS) to be added to tours. And coming soon, you’ll also be able to add VR180 photos to tours which can be easily taken from any VR180 camera. Have curious students wanting to explore ancient ruins, swim in the Indian Ocean, and save the endangered elephants in Africa? Coming this fall, ARCore will run on the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 so students can experience Expeditions AR and other AR apps directly on their tablets.
Adventures continue with 30 newly released activities and lesson plans, in 8 languages from Google Earth. Students and teachers can explore Mars, the world’s oceans and protected environments with NASA, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, The Ocean Agency, and the National Geographic Society.
Student scientists wanting to test hypotheses can use the Science Journal website, which has been updated with new content, including activities from the band OK Go in the OK Go Sandbox. Coming this fall, the new Google Drive integration will also allow students to conduct, document and access science experiments from any device running the free Science Journal app.
Innovative training with the Teacher Center and Applied Digital Skills
We heard that first time G Suite users and educators looking for a refresh found our #FirstDayofClassroom resources to be helpful, and now we’re expanding to include our other products, starting with Google Forms. Our new trainings in the updated Teacher Center are curated video trainings made by educators, for educators, with actionable steps to get started with G Suite for Education. We want to hear from you as we add more trainings and products, so submit your favorite Google for Education tips here.
Based on one of the top requests from teachers last year, the free video-based curriculum Applied Digital Skills site now enables instructors to assign lessons through Classroom. Students can share in the excitement too, with the ability to track their classes, lessons and the last video they viewed in the new Student Dashboard.
We shared that the first tablet running the same reliable operating system as Chromebooks, the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, is now shipping, and also announced a new affordable, no charging or pairing required stylus by STAEDTLER which will soon be available. Educators will soon have the ability to create a Quiz in Google Forms from Classroom and enable locked mode for distraction free testing, only on managed Chromebooks. And for all of the admins out there, make sure to check out Device Off Hours and subscribe to our revamped release notes.
From all of us at Google for Education, welcome back to school. We can’t wait to see what you accomplish during this upcoming school year. Be sure to follow along on Google for Education’s Twitter and Facebook pages for more information and resources for you and your students.
