New Sharing and Editing Options in Google Docs

Blog post from Richard's Free Technology 4 Teachers

Google recently announced some changes to Google Docs that should be of interest to teachers and students. Earlier this week Google announced that they would be rolling-out the new version of the document editor to all users over the next couple of weeks. The new version includes real-time updates (no more refreshing to see what your collaborators have written), chatting with collaborators within your documents, margin settings, and floating images. Learn more about the new Google Docs document editor in the video below.



Yesterday, Google announced new sharing settings for Google Docs. Now rather than simple "shared" or "not shared" labels your documents, presentations, and spreadsheets can be labeled "private," "anyone with link," or "public on the web." These options should make it easier for Google Docs users to keep track of who can or cannot see their documents. Learn more about the new sharing settings in the video below.


Applications for Education One of the complaints that I've occasionally heard from teachers about Google Docs is the lack of margin adjustments. That problem has been fixed in the new document editor. The new sharing settings should make it easier for students to understand who can see their creations.
Here are some related items that may be of interest to you: Free 33 Page Guide - Google for Teachers
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This is a great Google Presentation started by Mark Clarkson.
I hope you enjoy it!
Today is my birthday 9-9-09. I sent it at 9:09 am. I am now "29" Ha!
Sit back and enjoy! I think you will learn at least one new thing.

Google Docs

Google has release several new features for Google Docs this month, including the often-requested ability to import Word 2007(.docx) and Office 2007 (.xlsx) file formats. Google Docs has a size limit on uploaded files (500kb for documents and 1MB for spreadsheets). The Office 2007 document formats are compressed so much larger documents can be uploaded in 500kb of a .docx file than the same file size of .doc or .rtf.

In addition, Google Docs now supports several new gadgets for Google Spreadsheet data visualization:

• Tree Map Gadget (a “color-coded area diagram that helps you understand complicated hierarchical data at a glance”)
• Word Cloud Gadget (”visualize the popularity of words from large amounts of text”)
• Spider Chart Gadget (”visually compare the values of multiple attributes”)
• QR Code Gadget (”quickly encode data into the QR code format from a Google Docs spreadsheet so that it can be scanned and read by mobile devices that have a QR code reader”)
• Flash Cards (”easily create flashcard sets”)
• Word Study (”create interactive word games”)
• Word Search (”create an interactive word search from a column of words in a spreadsheet”)

To use Google Spreadsheet Gadgets, create a new spreadsheet in Google Docs and choose Insert > Gadgets. More details on the gadgets listed above are available on Google’s website at http://googledocs.blogspot.com/.