Tech Tips – Coffee Nancy

Google Calendar Appointment Slots

April 16, 2020April 12, 2020 nancy

Tired of managing multiple email requests or transferring student conference times from a Google Doc? You can create appointment slots in Google Calendar and let your students sign up for the time they want to meet with you. The appointments will appear directly on your calendar. How easy is that?

Open Google Calendar in Week view or Day view and click an empty time slot.
In the event box that pops up, click Appointment slots.
Add a title and choose a date and time.
Select how long each appointment will be.
(Optional) If you want to have the appointments on a different calendar, click the calendar name (often your name) to select the one you want.
(Optional) Select More options to set up a repeating event or add a description. Pro tip: Use the description area to ask students to tell you what they want to discuss so you can be prepared.

Completed appointment block with indication of where to click to choose a different calendar or add more options

When you are finished, click Save.

Your appointment block shows as a single event on your calendar, with a grid symbol in the top-left corner.

Appointment slot block on Google Calendar — The grid icon in the upper left corner tells you this is a block of appointment slots.

Now you are ready to let students make appointments.

Click on the appointment block in your calendar.
Copy and paste the appointment page link and send it to your students. Do not add students directly to the appointment slots on your calendar. This will add them to all appointment slots. Instead, direct them to the appointment page or add them yourself from that page.
Students click on the link and create an appointment that you will see on your calendar and they will see on theirs. They will need to be logged into their Google account to make an appointment.
As appointments are booked, they’ll appear as regular events overlapping the appointment block. They will have the same title as the appointment block title, but with the student’s name in parentheses at the end.

Link to copy for students and example of a filled appointment slot

Keep on Keeping with Keep!

April 5, 2020April 5, 2020 nancy

Google Keep is a great way to get organized and stay that way. It’s a core GSuite service, but not many people know about it and all that it can do. I recently presented on Keep at the Spring CUE conference.

During that presentation, I promised a blog post with some image headers that people could use and/or edit. This is that post.

I have made several Google Slides that you can download as images and use as headers in Keep. To use the images in the slides as is, open the slide deck, go to the slide you want, and select File > Download as > png. You will get an image you can upload to your Keep note, where it will appear at the top. Use the color palette on your Keep note if you want the colors to match. Use File > Make a copy if you want to edit and personalize my Slides. Enjoy!

Add Pin to Map in Google My Maps

November 9, 2016November 9, 2016 nancy

Here is a quick video showing how to use the search feature to add and customize a pin in Google My Maps. By customizing a map with their own pins, students can show what they know in a variety of content areas. These can include places where historical figures were born, where events took place, where literary characters lived, where scientific or mathematical discoveries occurred, etc.

Add Snapshot Image to Google Doc

May 17, 2016May 17, 2016 nancy

Insert an Image in a Google Doc via URL

May 16, 2016May 16, 2016 nancy

Alternative to the Subscribe to Post Button

September 17, 2015September 17, 2015 nancy

Google Sites are a great tool for teachers and students. They can be student e-portfolios, collaborative writing sites, and much more. On the teacher side, they are a wonderful way to communicate information about your class to students and their families. If you create a page using the Announcements template, you communicate current news and information or homework assignments and keep the newest posts at the top. Families can subscribe to the page and get an email message whenever you update it.

The problem, though, is that the default “Subscribe to posts” button that appears on the page doesn’t work for all browsers and can’t be removed. The good news is that there is another Google tool, Feedburner, that gives people a way to subscribe to your updates. There are several steps, but it’s actually very easy to do.

Log into your Google account. Create or go to the page on your website that visitors will subscribe to. Make sure you the page uses the Announcements page format. If you need to change the page format, click the gear menu in the upper right and go to Page Settings.
Scroll down the page until you locate the orange “Subscribe to posts” button. This may not be visible until your site is public.
Right click on the subscribe button (control + click on a Mac) and copy the subscription link. Depending on your browser, you might see different wording (Copy link location in Firefox, Copy link address in Google Chrome, Copy link in Safari).
Open a new tab (File > New Tab or Command + t). Go to Feedburner. Because it is a Google service, you should already be signed in and see your email address in the upper right corner. Locate the box marked “Burn a feed right this instant.”
Paste the URL you copied in step 3 into the box. DO NOT CLICK NEXT!
Edit the URL. Change https to http. Now you can click Next.
Give your feed a name. This is the title people will see in their email when they subscribe. Make it short but descriptive. Do not worry about changing the feed address. Click Next.
At the bottom, click the tiny “Skip directly to feed management” link.
On the screen that appears, click Publicize, then Email Subscriptions, then Activate.
Scroll down the page and copy the email subscription code. Be sure to highlight all the code before copying.
Return to the tab with your website. Click on the pencil icon to edit the page, then click on the HTML link at the upper right.
Paste the code you copied in step 10 into the box, then click Update.
Add any extra text you want to the page, then save your changes. For example, you may want to add something along the lines of: “Please be aware the Subscribe to posts link below does not work correctly for all browsers. To receive an email message when this page is updated, click the Subscribe to Class Announcements by Email link here:”
Pat yourself on the back. You did it!

Change the Size of Your Google Drawing

May 13, 2015May 13, 2015 nancy

Google Drawing is a wonderful tool that has many classroom implementations. Students can use it to develop advertising posters for invented products during an economics unit, build custom headers for a website, make infographics to show information on any number of topics, and much more. Sometimes, though, when you are working on a Drawing, you discover that you need to change its size. There are two main ways to do this.

Option 1: Click and drag the diagonal lines in the lower left corner.

This is easy if you want to make your drawing smaller or wider, but if you want to make it taller, you need to adjust the view first so you have room to drag it down. Simply go to View and choose a small percentage or Zoom Out. This will give you room on your screen outside the canvas to drag the corner down.

view options empty space below image

Option 2: Use File>Page setup.

You c an choose one of the standard sizes (these will match the size of the slides in Google Slides exactly) or a custom size. When opting for a custom size, you have the option of measuring your drawing in inches, centimeters, points, or pixels. If you will be printing your drawing, you will want to use inches, centimeters, or points, but pixels are useful when creating website headers or other drawings that will be shared online and need to have specific dimensions. Whether you choose a standard or custom size, don’t forget to click OK when you are done.

page setup options 2015-05-13_20-41-39

Share a Google Form as “View Only”

April 20, 2015April 20, 2019 nancy 2 Comments

Google has changed the way Forms can be shared as “View Only.” Please see this post for current information.

At a recent training, I was asked how to share a Google Form as “View Only” so collaborators could make a copy of the form and adapt it for their own needs without the original form being changed in any way.

Forms are a different kind of Google app. Where other apps have a big blue Share button in the corner, Forms have a Send Form button.

Send form and share buttons If you want to share your form with others, you can go to the File menu and choose “Add collaborators.” The problem for some is that your only option is to give people editing access to the form. If you don’t want those with whom you have shared your form to be able to edit it, you need to find another way to give them access.

Of course, you could send them the link to the live form, but that doesn’t give them the ability to copy the form so they can edit the questions on it. The key is in the warning note Google has added.

For Google, Forms are merely a way to get data into a spreadsheet. If you want to give people view only access to a form so they can make and edit their own copies of it, all you need to do is give them access to the spreadsheet that contains the responses, even if there are no responses yet.

At the top of your form, click the View responses button.

When the spreadsheet opens, click the blue Share button and add your collaborators, giving them view only access. Instruct them to make their own copy of the spreadsheet.

Once they have opened their copy of your spreadsheet, all they have to do is go to the Form menu and select Edit form. This will give them access to their copy of your original form, which they can edit and change to meet their own needs.

Important: If your form responses contain sensitive data, you should not share the response spreadsheet. In this case, I would recommend that you make your own copy of your form. The questions will be the same, but the spreadsheet with the responses will be empty, so you can share it without worrying about revealing information that should be kept private.

Add a favicon to your Google site

April 9, 2015April 9, 2015 nancy

Embed PDF in Google Sites

February 8, 2015February 8, 2015 nancy

One of the things I have been struggling with lately is how to embed a PDF in a Google Site. It turns out if you have the PDF saved in your Google Drive, it’s not that difficult. All you have to do is click on the PDF in your Drive, pop it out into a new window, and copy the embed code. Then you head over to your site, click to edit, choose HTML, and paste in the code. Update and save, then sit back and congratulate yourself on a job well done!

See the step by step instructions and animated GIFs of the process below.

Step 1: Open PDF in your Drive and click on the Pop Out window icon. This step is the key; you can’t get the embed code unless you pop out the window.