Introducing G Suite for Education

Introducing a new brand for Google Apps for Education, G Suite for Education.  Here is the official blog post by Kelly Campbell, Senior Director of G Suite Marketing, Google Cloud


All together now...Introducing G Suite!

All around the world, business are filling up with busyness.  Employees today are more plugged-in than ever before, but technology too often gets in the way of turning ideas into game changers,  For business, sharing and communicating has gotten complicated and often happens in silos.  The bigger the company, the bigger the challenge.

But what if technology lived up to its promise for us at work?  What if it helped us cut through the noise so we could work together to focus on what matters?

We created Google Apps for Work ten years ago, to do just that - to help people everywhere work and innovate together, so businesses can move faster and go bigger.

And today, we're introducing a new name that better reflects this mission: G Suite

G Suite is a set of intelligent apps - Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Hangouts, and more designed to bring people together, with real time collaboration built in from the start.  And there's a lot more on the way.  Because we believe that when organizations break down silos, connect people and empower them to work together, we get the speed, agility and impact needed to compete in today's market.

So in the spirit of teamwork, we partnered with some of our favorite illustrators from around the world to bring our ideas to life with their iconic creativity.

With G Suite, information can flow freely between devices, apps, people and teams so great ideas never get left in the margins again. Imagine the future for your business, if this was how it could be...

Screen casts and Playlists!

As a Technology Integration Coach, I always use screen casts to create tutorials, or "how to" videos for staff at my school. Having these resources available allows staff to learn the concepts at their own pace and to reference the material at their convenience.

In the past, I created screen casts using Screencast-o-matic on my Windows computer.  While this application served its purpose, I wanted to use my Google Chromebook instead.  So, I installed the Screencastify extension on my  Google profile and used it to create my videos.  (This extension can be found in the Chrome Webstore.)

Using Screencastify on my Chromebook allowed me to create the videos easier and quicker because I was able to connect my Google account and save my videos directly on Google Drive and/or upload them to YouTube.   Having that ability really made my workflow much easier.  I created many videos and I was very impressed with this extension. If you are using a Google Chromebook, I would highly recommend installing the Screencastify extension and trying it out.

Furthermore, teachers can use screen casts to implement a flipped or blended classroom.  Creating short videos on concepts will allow students to access the resource at home and view it at their own pace.

Additionally, I would recommend creating YouTube Playlists for all of your videos.  This will allow you to sort and organize similar videos into a list.  It will be easier for your audience to view and find the videos.  For example, I created 10 videos about Google Classroom and I was able to add all of the videos into a playlist.  The playlists will show up in the Library tab in YouTube.    Having a playlist will allow you to add collaborators and share the list with your audience.

Here are the links to my YouTube playlists.  Note, these playlists are evolving.  I recommend that you subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified of updates..

Google Calendar Playlist
Gmail Playlist
Google Classroom Playlist #1
Google Classroom Playlist #2
Google Chrome

How to Search Google Docs using Regular Expressions

Use regular expressions to search in Google Docs

Posted: 27 Sep 2016 07:18 AM PDT

Starting today, you can use “regular expressions” to more quickly and easily find what you’re looking for in Google Docs on the web, much like you can in Google Sheets. With regular expressions, you can search for patterns of text, lists of words, and more, instead of single words or phrases.

For instance, imagine you need to find all the US zip codes referenced in a lengthy document. To do so, you can simply search for [0-9]{5}(-[0-9]{4})?. This will identify any zip code in your document consisting of five numbers with an optional hyphen and four-digit add-on.

To use regular expressions in the Find and Replace function, type the expression into the Find box and check the "Match using regular expressions" box. For more details, including info on those expressions that are supported in Docs, check out the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Search and use find and replace

Google Apps Update:A GoogleFinance Change

Historical GOOGLEFINANCE data no longer accessible outside of Google Sheets Posted: 27 Sep 2016 04:43 PM PDT We want to make you aware of a small change to the GOOGLEFINANCE function, which makes it easy to pull current or historical securities information directly into your spreadsheets in Google Sheets. Starting today, it will not be possible to download historical data or access it outside of Sheets using Apps Script or an API. If you have a spreadsheet with historical data generated from the GOOGLEFINANCE function and you try to download it or access it via Apps Script or an API, the corresponding cells will show “#N/A.” You will still be able to view that historical data from within the Sheets application, and you will still be able to download current data and access current data via Apps Script or an API. Please keep this in mind when using the GOOGLEFINANCE function going forward. Launch Details Release track: Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release Rollout pace: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) Impact: All end users Action: Change management suggested/FYI More Information Help Center: GOOGLEFINANCE