New things from Google Apps for Education that are helpful or fun!

Google Sheets

You can now resize the formula bar so that you see complicated formulas or data that you’ve entered in a specific cell and see what you’re doing! If you use this area to add one of the  function capabilities available in Google Sheets, you may have found it hard to troubleshoot  your formula when it isn’t working because of the size restrictions of the formula bar.

So extend the viewing area!

Update a  Chart or Graph automatically from within Docs or Slides with the new Update button. If you have inserted a chart or graph into a Doc or Slide, you can now automatically update that visual right inside the document.

Google Slides

There is a new feature added to the presentation side of Google Slides, which accepts questions from the audience  through a short URL. The questions appear on the presenter side and the presenter can decide it he or she wants to show these questions to the audience and when to address the questions.

From the  presenter side, when you get ready to present your Slides, you have the option to present with Q and A.

When you make this selection, in addition to your presentation window, a separate window will appear. From here you can see your slides, the slide (speaker) notes and a  new tab called “Audience Tools” which is basically all the questions that have been asked. (I know, it would be more convenient if these weren’t on separate tabs. A bit of a cognitive overload when also trying to present.)

Be sure to pay attention to accepting  questions – your choices are “anyone at your organization” (in our case, the @alaska domain) or “anyone.”

Viewer can vote up or vote down questions to help filter those that are most important or intereting. Check out this video for how this feature was used.

Google Calendar

Have you noticed anything new in the event information in your  Google Calendar? The  location for your event may now  appear in the description when  you are in the day or week view mode, as long as there is room. Now you may be able to see where you’re supposed to be without clicking into the details.

And here is another Calendar update…if you have set your options to be notified of upcoming events, you may have been annoyed that the notification actually interrupted you while working in a different browser tab. The calendar notification comes  to the surface and you had to click it away to continue your work. You can now elect to have event notifications  sent as browser notifications instead of those interrupting alerts.

From the Calendar settings look for the notifications options.

When you make your selection, you’ll get a confirmation.

And you won’t get interrupted again!

Google Apps