Revision history in Google Docs

Twice this week and countless times in the past, I’ve relied on one of the most powerful features of Google Docs… file revision history.  This feature lets you:

1. view every edit that has occurred in all Google Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations, including the date/time of every edit in every file and the editors’ names,
2. highlights those edits and deletions for easy identification, and
3. enables you to restore any document to an earlier state at any point in the process.

This week I helped someone who had overwritten a document with new info go back into the file history to find the original data and then copy that data into a new file without affecting the current version, and I was able to restore a document to an earlier state before a block of important data had been accidentally deleted. Revision history is built-in to Google Docs and requires no additional actions on the part of the users… all edits are automatically saved and accessible. Here’s a tutorial which I found this morning on the web which will help explain how to use this critical feature: http://goo.gl/wOS7Un

Customize your campus (or teacher) Twitter Page

In an earlier post, I listed some links and information to help you setup auto-posting from your campus or teacher public calendar to a twitter account. Twitter provides a host of customization options which can help personalize your page, as in the example below with our campus colors, background image and custom links formatting.  Here’s a link to the Twitter help page with instructions on how to customize your own page :)

Click the image or here to visit the page!

Google’s online help guide for G+

Now that the district has rolled out G+ for required professional development, you might have questions or need refreshers on some of the features of this powerful and vast platform. The online help guide has lots of information and tutorial videos to help you… here’s a link (or click on the image): https://support.google.com/plus/?hl=en#topic=3049661

Setup multiple profiles in Chrome

Chrome allows you to setup and synchronize a variety of profiles according to your needs, and to access them through icons in the top left corner of the Chrome browser. My setup looks like this (the Green checkmark shows the current profile):

This is useful because each profile (blue and red icons and arrows below) has its own set of bookmarks (blue and red rectangles below) and extensions associated with it which synchronize across all of the computers you use. My wife’s profiles are loaded too, so if she needs to access important bookmarks or extensions, she can load her profiles (work and home) from my browser whenever she needs to. The green arrows show you how to add profiles from the Chrome settings window:

Campus GAFE Resources Directory

The number of Google Apps For Education (GAFE) resources for your campuses is likely to explode very quickly, and organizing drive folders and documents for easy access will become very complex, especially since those folders and documents will most likely be created and shared by a wide variety of staff with no common organizational scheme. While this is liberating for the originators (since there’s no need to adapt to any organizational vision) it can be quite frustrating to those who are trying to make these new resources readily available… in fact, unless you’ve already created an organizational folder structure for your campus, even getting started will seem like a monumental task. One solution which I highly recommend is to create a directory of resource and links in a single Google Spreadsheet and then post a link to that directory to your staff and in your G+ communities links sections. This will allow you to create a structure through labels and links which can be sorted/filtered in a variety of ways and will function independently of the mindset of the originators. I’ve started working on one for BMS this morning, which you can view at the following link: Public View link of BMS GAFE Resources Directory

3 Great Resources

I’ve added these to the ‘More tips…’ section of the Tech Topics Blog (right-side panel). There are many useful tips and techniques located on these sites for all skill levels:

• 100+ Ways Google Can Save Teachers Time
• Digital Inspiration (Advanced Tips)
• Teacher Tech (Intermediate Tips)

Skyward Gradebook tip: Modify Gradesheet Sequence

If you keep a paper gradebook along with your Skyward electronic version and you get a new student in your class, most likely you will add that student to the bottom of your list (and they will, consequently, be out of sort order with the rest). Your electronic gradebook will add that student in whatever sort order you have selected (most likely alpha order by last name). The following screenshots will show you how to make your Skyward electronic gradebook match this ‘out-of-sorts’ custom order (i.e. match your paper copy):

How to recover a bookmarks folder in Chrome

This morning I accidentally deleted a large bookmarks folder while trying to copy it to another Chrome profile… there is no undo option for this :( I did, however, find the following instructions to be extremely useful in restoring a backup bookmarks file which might be useful to you at some point! http://www.howtogeek.com/111784/how-to-recover-accidentally-deleted-bookmarks-in-chrome-firefox/

How to embed a collaborative document on Google (or other) Sites

Here’s a link to the G+ post with instructions: https://plus.google.com/u/0/115174107767353780511/posts/3px2V6AdcjC

…or you can the following link to view them directly (once the image loads, click on it to zoom in and scroll around): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/197021/Tech%20Posts/EmbedProcesScreenshot.png

Use an Incognito Window to Allow Students to Present from Your Computer

This is a great tip from Alice Keeler (posted here) which would also work well in other situations (like demonstrating something in your Chrome setup on someone else’s computer while they’re logged on)