Google News Updates

Google Docs is the web-based tool that has become the organizational center of the classrooms. No longer there is lost assignment problems with development of Google Docs.

Docs also teaches directorial skills. Students form folders to keep up with assignments. The most significant folder is the folder students share with the teacher. All graded writing goes into this folder, and it serves as a characters portfolio for the semester. You do not have to hunt student work; it is organized in a student folder. At the end of the day, you can leave with just a laptop, no papers to lug around.

Each student folder is in a group class folder. The class folder contains each student's writing for the semester:

Each student's online writing portfolio folder is also mutual with his or her parents. Parents can even remark on student work and participate in the revision and editing process.

For students, Google Docs is a priceless tool in the writing process. Students do not need a flash drive to bring drafts to and from home. Also, students can share inscription with peer editors. After peer restriction, students move their final draft into their English 9 folder. As the final editor, you can leave comments to assist the student in revising his or her final draft. It is satisfying to browse through the revision history and see that a student is considering each comment as they revise: Yea! They are actually reading what I wrote! Usually, students do not read teacher comments that are hand written on paper, but it seems to work in Google Docs.

Google has launched a couple of improvements to the way saving works in all of Google Docs. Now it's much simpler to tell, at a glance, when documents need to be saved, when documents are busy saving, and when documents have been saved into the cloud:

A clickable save button means your document has edits which haven't been saved so far and the timestamp lets you know when it was last saved. You can either wait for autosave to kick in after a few seconds, or you can yourself save at any time using the keyboard (ctrl S on PC, cmd S on Macs), save button, or by going to through the file menu.

A disabled button reading “Saving” means your document is at present being saved, and should complete in a second or two.

A disabled button reading “Saved” means that all data in this document is now saved, and the timestamp tells you when the last change happened. You can securely exit the application or continue editing the document.

These changes are now available in presentations and documents and will be coming to spreadsheets soon.

Over the next few weeks, Google is rolling out the capability to upload all file types to the cloud through Google Docs, giving you one place where you can upload and access your key files online. Because Google Docs now supports files up to 250 MB in size, which is bigger than the attachment limit on most email applications, you’ll be able to backup large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and much more to the cloud. More significantly, instead of carrying a USB drive, you can now use Google Docs as a more suitable option for accessing your files on different computers.

This feature can also assist you work with teams to organize and collaborate on information online. For example, a designer can share large schematic files with her construction firm, while a P.T.A. member can share large graphic files for posters with other members. You can still add these files to the same shared project folder your team has previously been using to collaborate on documents and spreadsheets.

In addition to uploading any file into Google Docs, Google Apps Premier Edition customers will be able to effortlessly upload many files at once and sync them with their desktop in real time using third party applications. You can read more about how the capability to upload any file will help businesses on the Google Enterprise blog.

This feature will be enabled for your account over the next couple of week look for the bubble notice when you sign in to Google Docs. For more information, check out the post on the Google Docs blog.