In a recent Teaching with Technology workshop, we covered some of the most noteworthy Google updates to enhance your productivity in teaching and research. Here are some of our favorite new features across the Google Workplace suite:
Google Drive
Tools for tidying your Storage
The College has a new storage policy that puts limits on how much you can keep in your college Google account. For most people, this won’t be an issue, but if you find yourself needing to tidy up your digital space, check out some of the clean-up tips in this handy document.
Scan directly to Google Drive with your phone
You have access to a scanner in your pocket with the Google Drive app! When you open the app on your phone, you’ll see an icon in the lower right corner. Android phones show a camera icon and iPhones display a QR-code looking icon. Push this button to start scanning documents that will save directly to your Google Drive as PDFs.
Record Google Slides Presentations
Google Slides now comes equipped with a recording tool so that you can narrate over presentations. This feature is available to all faculty and teaching staff. Pushing this new “REC” button in the top right will allow you to start recording. You can choose to include audio-only or audio plus a webcam image over your slides. The completed video will save directly to your Google Drive and can be easily accessed and shared from the slide deck.
Google Calendar
Appointment Schedules
Though not a new feature, appointment schedules remain one of our favorite tools in Google Workplace. Google is continually adding new features to this tool and making it even more useful for scheduling things like office hours, 1:1 appointments, and more. If you haven’t yet made the switch from slots to schedules, you’ll definitely want to take a look!
Gmail
Make Tasks from Emails
Tasks are a really handy feature in Google that allow you to keep a running to-do list, assign due-dates to items, and more. You can manually create Tasks in your calendar, but there is also a feature in Gmail that allows you to add a task directly from an email. Clicking the “Add to Tasks” icon in the top toolbar of your email will generate a new task that is linked to the email for easy reference.
Make an appointment today with teachtech@conncoll.edu if you want to learn more about Google tools!