Tech Tip Tuesday: Sharing Permissions and Visibility Options with Google Documents

Sharing and Permissions

You can share your documents and set different permission levels for each person who has access to the document.  

Edit, view, and comment privileges

You can share your docs with just the people you want, and you can specify exactly what level of access (edit, view, or comment) each person has for each document.

You can choose to explicitly share it with individuals or groups in one of three types of roles with sharing privileges

Owner

• When you create a document, you are automatically the owner
• There can only be one owner of a document
• The document is only available to you, which is private
• The owner is the only one who can edit, view, delete or invite others to the document

Collaborators with edit access (editors)

• Can edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and drawings.
• Can invite or delete other editors and viewers (if the owner has given them permission).
• Can export a copy of the document, spreadsheet, presentation, or drawing to their local hard drive.
• Can view the list of editors.
• Can make a copy of a doc, and copy the list of doc's editors

Others with view access (viewers)

• Can see the most recent version of a document, spreadsheet, presentation, or drawing but can't make any changes.
• Can export a copy of the document, spreadsheet, presentation, or drawing to their local hard drive.
• Can not view the list of editors.
• Can make a copy a doc, but can't copy the list of doc's editors.

Viewers with comment access

• Same features as above, but can add comments to the document.

Visibility Settings

You can choose to make your document more widely accessible via links or search. These visibility settings are detailed in the text below:

Private

When you create a private doc, you are the only person with access to it.

People at your organization with the link

Docs set to this option are accessible to anyone inside the domain who knows the URL of the file.

People at your organization can find and access

Docs set to this option will be indexed by Google Drive search and may be opened by anyone in your organization.

Anyone with the link

Docs are public and anyone can access it as long as they have the link.  It is a great setting if you want to give easy access to information to a bunch of people (as long as the contents of the doc aren't sensitive).

Public on the web
Docs can be access from anyone anywhere on the web, no sign in is required.

To share a document:

Here's how to add specific editors and viewers:

1. Open the doc you want to share.
2. Click Share in the upper-right corner of the document.
   
3. At the bottom of the Sharing settings window, under 'Invite people,' type the email address or the group

• 

4. To the right of the list of names, choose 'Can edit', ‘Can comment’ or 'Can view' from the drop-down.
   
5. Two quick options to consider (to share with default settings, feel free to skip this note):
• By default, people who can edit your doc will also be able to share it with additional people. You can remove that ability by clicking Change next to 'Editors will be allowed to add people...' before you click Share.
  
  
• By default, everyone you share a doc with will get an invitation email. If you'd rather not notify them, un-check the 'Send email notifications' box. They'll have access the next time they sign in.
  
6. Click Share.

When you share the document with an individual directly, they will notice the document appear in their Google Drive documents list with the document name bolded.

If you selected to have an email notification sent, the individual will receive an email message with a link to the shared document.

How to: Apply for Google Certified Trainer

Currently, I am in the process of applying for Google Certified Trainer.  There are many requirements that are needed to be completed, such as :

• Google Educator Status by passing 5 exams. You must pass all 5 Qualification Exams, which can be found at the Google Training Site.  The certificate must be uploaded when submitting the application.
• Case Study with training resources and experiences 
• 2 Minute Video showcasing your training skills.  The video must be public and published to YouTube.
• Record of training experiences or sessions 
• Resume 
• 3 References from those you have trained 
• Links to your site(s), blog(s), social media, etc. 

Here is my short 2 minute video that I just completed:  http://youtu.be/rxeB170o1wM 

My perspective on being a Google Certified Trainer:

I am hopeful that I will meet all of the requirements to obtain this status.  I am very eager to become a Google Certified Trainer.  I would like to be a Google Certified Trainer because teaching is my passion, especially technology. I love teaching students, staff, and people of all ages!  I am proud of my students and staff when I witness them implementing and using a Google app or concept that I taught them.  I want to share my experiences, and enthusiasm with everyone and I want people to realize that Google is not just a search engine.   In addition, I feel I can be an asset to the Google community by sharing and expressing my experiences.  However, in order for me to be the best I can be, it is important for me to be a student of the Google community as well, and learn from other trainers and their experiences.

I recently submitted my application and I hope to hear an answer if I was accepted by the end of May. Being hopeful and positive.  

Internet Safety and Academic Resources Presentation

Tonight, I had the pleasure of presenting information about Internet Safety and Academic Resources to the +William Davies Middle School parents.  It was a great session.  The parents shared their experiences regarding social media, and internet safety, specifically addressing experiences and/or concerns pertaining to their children. They shared some great ideas on how they monitor their children online.  One parent said, she gets an email forwarded to her every time her child creates an online account.  She sets the filter and notifications through her comcast account settings.

In addition, we had a discussion about some of the most dangerous apps that are available to download.  Some apps that were mentioned were Yik Yak, Whisper, SnapChat, and Down.  It was a true learning experience.  I stressed the importance of communication, monitoring activity, and privacy settings on social media.

Below is my presentation.  Please use this information and discuss it with your children.  I hope I have enlightened you about Internet Safety and the importance of communication with your children about Internet Safety.

Vote for My Blog - The Tech Lady

I am so thankful to have been nominated as a Top Tech and Internet Savvy Blogger from VoiceBoks, The Voice of Parenthood top 50 list!  Now, I need your support to be in the top 10 list!   Please Vote for The Tech Lady.  Thank you for your support and I am very thankful to be nominated.  In addition, I am happy that many of you find my blog to be helpful.  

How To: Fix Error running gClassFolders

One of the teachers I work with is using Google Apps for Education and is using the old version of Spreadsheets.  When she ran the a new Doctopus script, she received the error above.

I quickly turned to the Google Apps and Scripts Community for assistance, and fortunately +Justin Gale  was able to guide me into the direction of resolving the issue.  

The issue was originally posted by +Andrew Stillman.  Here is the link to his post, https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AndrewStillman/posts/8dWasXMcWnD 

I was able to follow the directions and remove the word 'Decorated' from the script in line 323, and the teacher was able to run the Doctopus script successfully.  

Tech Tip Tuesday: Using Google Presentations

Anyone who has a Google account, automatically has access to Google's online office suite in the Drive app.
I created a short video tutorial using Screencast-o-matic for students at the +William Davies Middle School on the procedures to create a Google Presentation.  However, it is certainly not limited to just students. Click on the short video below to preview it.  I hope you find it helpful!

Follow Up Post: Hour of Code Presentation

Being a Technology Integration Coach, it is my responsibility to provide ideas and resources to staff at the +William Davies Middle School.  In the middle of December it was Computer Science Education Week, so I approached the STEM and LMT teachers, Mrs. Green and Ms. Fitzgerald, about teaching computer programming to their 7th and 8th grade students.  They were on board with the idea which allowed us to have about six classes participate in the Hour of Code movement, which introduces students K-12, to Computer Science.

During the week in December, I spoke with the participating teachers and provided them with resources and ideas to help promote computer programming in their classrooms.

Being a former computer programmer, I was very excited and could not wait to teach coding to the students in STEM class.  I taught three classes how to program in HTML. I tried to incorporate simple and familiar concepts to them so they can make connections and comparisons.

They used a simple editor, such as Notepad to write their code in which they needed to save their file as a webpage.  Then, they executed the program by double clicking on the file to see the results of their code.  By the end of the week, they wrote a program that displayed a simple webpage that included, a page title, formatted text, a bullet list, an image, horizontal lines, and page breaks.  In addition, students learned programming vocabulary, procedures to test and debug their code, and they learned how to collaborate with each other.  Here is an image of a few concepts about the HTML lesson.

In LMT class, Ms. Fitzgerald had her students use a GUI application, such as Scratch, in which the students created an animated holiday card by using a drag and drop interface.

By the end of the week, students felt proud and took ownership in this topic.  Here is a short video presentation I created to display the student's accomplishments.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Experiment with KaHoot!

Are you looking for an interactive game based assessment application that can be used with your students? Well, try KaHoot! It can be accessed from a mobile or any other device. Note: I was able to find the app on the Google Play Market, not in the Apple store.

Visit https://getkahoot.com/ to sign up for an account and to create your assessment

• What is it?  A game based learning application
• Teachers needs to create an account, which is FREE.

Teachers will:

• create the game based assessment
• When the teacher launches the game, a code will be generated. This is your game pin.

• The teacher will share the game pin with the class and the students will join the game.
• need to project the questions on the board or big screen for the class to see.

Students will:

• enter the game pin on their device
• enter their nickname
• respond to the questions on their device
• only see the choices on their device, not the questions

Additional Information

Teachers can:  

• get feedback and results from the game for the students.
• preview the game before sharing it with students
• set a time for each question to be displayed

• Types of assessments:  quiz, poll, discussion
• Pictures or videos can be included in the questions.
• Each game can be edited, deleted, duplicated, or shared on social media

Follow Up Post: Behind the Scenes with Google Sites

This is a follow up post to Behind the Scenes with Google Sites.  Students in Mrs. Brown's 8th grade Language Arts class at the +William Davies Middle School were assigned an anti-bullying campaign assignment in which they had to showcase their campaign in a website.   As a Technology Integration Coach, I taught all her classes a lesson on Google Sites and I also followed up with her classes once they started the website, so they can ask me any technical questions about the application. They were able to apply all of the concepts I taught them, and even added some features of their own.  Here are a few samples of their project.

https://sites.google.com/site/wdmsbullyingx4/

https://sites.google.com/site/cbcbullyingproject/

https://sites.google.com/site/turnintherightdirection/

https://sites.google.com/site/wdmsendbullying/home

I am very proud of all the students who used Google Sites to complete this project.  Everyone did a great job working together, organizing the information, and setting up the website layout.  I am happy to have been apart of this assignment.

Using Digital Storytelling for Student Tutorials

As a technology integration coach, I find it challenging to always be a step ahead of the technology, and of the students.  At the +William Davies Middle School, there is a 1:1 initiative,  meaning all students in the building in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, all have a netbooks assigned to them.

However, at times, students are not familiar with basic concepts of navigating their device or just basic terminology of technology.  The concepts may range from, checking the wifi on the device and enabling it, refresh their internet session, network drives, files/folder management, and  proper shut procedures.

So, thinking ahead for the next school year, myself and +Joe Knopp, the computer technician for the student netbooks,  have a variety of topics that we want to portray in a movie.  With the help of +Leanna Mullen who will be video taping, (and is an expert with videos and video editing tools), we are creating short tutorial videos on topics that students can reference during the school year.  Joe and I started to write ideas on the white board and we just add to the list as the ideas/issues come up.  Here is our list so far.

I wanted to try to have a variety of styles presented in the tutorials for the students.  +Leanna Mullen was able to take straight video of +Lew Improta-HTSD and I acting out the concept of locking your desktop when you leave your netbook unattended. Also, I was able to create screencasts using Screencast-o-matic and  BitStrips to portray the concept using digital storytelling.   Here is one of the short tutorials on Webpage Refresh using Bitstrips.  

First, Leanna and I brainstormed together to find computer/technology Bitstrip scenes that would be accommodating for our movie.  Then, I used Windows Snipping Tool, to capture the scene and save it as an image.  

Using Final Cut Pro on her MacPro, Leanna was able to photo shop the scene to include customizations and include an audio recording of my voice to the storyboard in the project.  Using Final Cut Pro made it easy to perform video edits and customization into the tutorial.  

We will continue to work on the rest of our tutorials and when completed, I will upload them to YouTube and write a follow up post on my blog.  

How to use Flubaroo

Flubaroo is a script that will run in a Google Spreadsheet that will grade an assessment in minutes! Yes, I said minutes!  Plus it is FREE!

First, you must sign into your Google account and create an assessment using Google Forms. When creating an assessment, I recommend that you always prompt the user to enter their first and last name.   Once this is completed, the teacher must complete the assessment and enter ANSWER KEY into the first and last name.  That way it is easy recognizable to select the correct responses when setting up the Flubaroo configuration.

Next, you must install the script on the responses spreadsheet, (this is the spreadsheet that is generated from the Google form, which has all of the user's responses to the assessment).  Initialize the settings in the script to select the answer key, and amount of points the questions are worth.  Once this is done, run the script and it will grade the responses.  The script will create a new spreadsheet with the grades.  At this point, you can send an email notification to students that the assessment was graded.  That's it! Fast and easy grading.

Here is a short video on using Flubaroo.

I inserted a few instructions below on installing and grading with Flubaroo.  

Instructions to install Flubaroo:

• Must Install the script first on the response sheet:
• Select ‘Tools’ ‘Script Gallery’ search for ‘Flubaroo’
• Click ‘Install’
• Click ‘Continue’ to authorize
• Click ‘Accept’ Flubaroo permissions
• A green status bar will appear saying ‘Installed’
• Close the window

Grading with Flubaroo:

• Select ‘Flubaroo’ on the menu bar in the spreadsheet
• Select ‘Grade Assignment’
• Assign the points to each question
• Select ‘Continue’
• Select ‘Answer Key’ response from the list
• Select ‘Continue’

The grading will begin and a new sheet is created called ‘GRADES’.

Behind the Scenes with Google Sites

Student's in Mrs. Brown's 8th grade Language Arts class at the William Davies Middle School created a 'practice' website using Google Sites.  They will be using Google Sites to portray their anti-bullying project.

I explained to the students that whenever you create a Google site, it is live and that Google houses the site on their server.  However, for our purposes, the 'practice' website was not promoted anywhere except in our class, therefore, the public would not be aware of it.

To start the lesson, I had them sign into their Google accounts and go to the Sites app in the apps launcher.  I explained that if they do not see the 'Sites' link in the list, they can type www.sites.google.com to access the app or go to 'even more options' to go to the next page in the apps launcher.

First, they created a website, by selecting a blank template, assigned a name and selected a theme. I wanted them to create a new website using a blank template because there is more flexibility then using one with a template.

Once it was created, I modeled many features of Google Sites such as:

• Add a page to the website
• Edit a page on the website
• Insert an image on a page
• image toolbar
• Insert a link with a text description on a page
• link toolbar
• Insert an object from their Google Drive
• Format text on a page
• Add/Delete a page to the navigation
• Re-order pages on the navigation
• Edit the navigation type
• Insert a custom logo into the website header
• Modify the page settings

Finally, students were introduced to a new feature of creating different types of webpages, such as announcements, lists, and file cabinet pages. They were not aware of the different type of page templates.  I also challenged them to 'think out of the box' by creating animations by embedding a Google Presentation, using Google Hangout to create an interview, and using YouTube to create a video.  

When the students are done with their project, I will write a follow up post.  I am looking forward to see their websites.

New Features in the Google App Launcher

A new feature I just noticed today, is the option to rearrange and create a shortcut in the apps launcher in your Google account.   

First, you must login to your Google account. I recommend you use Google Chrome.

Next, click on the apps launcher on the top right side of the screen. 

Then, you can rearrange your apps by dragging them in the appropriate order.

You can also drag apps to the top part of the window or the first page, so that the most commonly used apps appear on the first.  In my opinion, it is somewhat a shortcut because you do not have to select 'Even More Options', to go to the second page.

That's it! You just customized your apps launcher window.  

Enjoy!