Google Docs - 5 Great Features!

hi there I'm Jamie Keat welcome to five great Google doc features use the menu on the right hand side to help jump through the video at any time hit the home button to get back to this screen if you like what you see Please

Subscribe the first great feature in Google Docs I want to talk about is voice typing now to get to voice typing it's quite easy just go up to your menu bar and you see under Tools and scroll down a little bit under word count you'll see voice typing just click on it the microphone will appear and you're ready to go once you click it let's give it a try how are you today question mark new line I'm fine thank you period new paragraph it was the best of times it was the worst of times exclamation mark so you can see it picks up my voice quite easily and sometimes I notice with internet speeds and connections it can have a few more errors if I'm not pronouncing my words quite clearly it can have some errors but generally it works quite well you can go back in correct errors by highlighting and making changes and just talking over the word if you do want to make a change uh without turning anything off this is available in over 40 languages also so it has a large spectrum of users that could take advantage of this for me inside the classroom I really like the idea of students using this to write stories or get their ideas out differently uh than just typing it so I think this is one of the great features that Google Docs has added recently to their

program another great feature I want to talk about that Google Docs has is the research tool to find that you just go up to the tools menu option again click on it and then you'll see it second down research let's say you were writing a paper and I wish I would had this during my University days but let's say I was writing something about Albert Einstein and I needed to get some information on him so I'm just going to I had it copied I'm going to paste it in there and we're going to say that I had this article that I was using in my paper so to insert it as a uh to it or to just insert it you can see it goes right in with all the formatting now I could have chose a different format too so if I just go back up to this little arrow up here you can see in that case it was already on Chicago I could go to MLA scroll down and I'll find it again here and insert it and you can see the changes that are made and I'll insert it one more time and this time I'll go to apa so very easy to site like I said if you've spent a lot of time trying to figure out where the commas go uh where the periods go where the dates go this is a great way to speed you up you can also uh do this you can just have to go up here and change to uh images and it will give you the images and you can also see that you can look to see if it's free to use or not filtered I'm just going to use the free to use uh and if I wanted to use a picture I'll scroll down and I'm going to take um I'm just gonna take this one I'm just going to drag it over and right away you can see they've cited it at the bottom of the page you can see it where it was retrieved from so very simple uh simple ways to uh make sure your research and your setting is correct uh one more thing I just wanted to show you that I find kind of neat is the I'll drop down here are the quotes and I'll just leave it as Albert Ein Stone Albert Einstein uh and you can see all the different quotes that you can insert into your paper I'll just hit enter a few times here and I'll just insert this one and then it goes um right into it so and again we have it cited at the bottom of the page so this makes for very easy research sighting bibliographies uh I wish I would have had this a few years ago so uh something that can save you a lot of time something to introduce to your students uh to show them how easy it can be to site things correctly

Google doc templates have become a great feature I never really used them before I never found them that attractive but the new ones have quite a professional look to them I'm going to show you where they're located if you haven't seen them already just go up to your file menu go to new and then scroll down to from template when you click that you'll be introduced to all the new templates that Google Docs has now as you can see right away they have quite a professional look to them I just think about all the time that I that it could be saved with now choosing one of these templates and just modifying pictures or changing the titles to what I need and they're set up in such an attractive way so even for my kids in my uh classroom if they were using a story template and I'll just choose the story template here you can see it loads up puts a picture has the title and it's all ready to go they can just alter a few things delete the information below and they can start typing what I really like with the voice typing that I talked about before picture that this they open up their template they're all ready to go they just start voice typing so these new changes are making a lot more accessible for many different types of students to get their ideas on page so there is another way you can get to uh your templates if you're starting from your uh Google Docs at any time right across the top of it you'll see that it's available for you if you uh only see this top view like this just make sure you hit the more up top and it will stretch out to see more so these new templates I think will speed up people's uh productivity in creating greatl looking documents in Google Docs and it's something I think that was missing for a long time but now they have

them if you want to see all the changes that you or anybody else has made to a document revision history is a great feature to use so let me give you an example how this works I have a document here that I uh just copied and paste some things into a few weeks ago putting a list together so you'll find uh revision history under the file and see revision history and what happens is at first you can see when it was created on September 3rd gives the time uh and you can see how it's changed uh altered color when I did that too but I'm going to hit down at the bottom here show more detailed revisions and it kind of goes through the timeline of how uh when and when I did things on it so for instance if I click at 251 you can see it brought back to where I was at 251 at 255 uh where I was a few minutes later uh so at any of these points this is what I like uh if something was deleted out of it or if um or if you wanted to go back to an early part all you have to do is hit restore this version and that's where it goes to so I find this is really great when students are uh in group work because you can see when they've shared a document with you you can see who's been working on what when they've been working and if someone else actually um deletes anything on purpose or not on purpose then you can get it back and you can see actually who did it by their login in the time that they did it so revision history is a great feature uh if you want to keep track of who's doing what or just to protect your uh all the work that you've

done the last great feature I'm going to talk about today in Google Docs are add-ons so what add-ons do is they just make your Google Docs do a little bit more thirdparty developers have designed programs that you can add on to your Google Docs uh to get things specifically done that you might want so they're really easy to install just go up to your add-ons menu you can see get add-ons when you click it brings you to the store and right away you can kind of scroll and see many add-ons uh if you kind of scroll over you can see different ratings on each one uh for example um I'm going to choose to put in Lucid chart here this is a mind mapping one I've used it before I'll just show you how easy it is to install an uh an add-on and how quickly they're ready to go so once you click it all you have to do is hit allow and then once you go back to your add-ons you can see I have lucid diagrams right there and then you can see it's loading up and I'm just going to grab one for example you can modify it and everything too but I'm just going to hit insert and it's working very slow right now but you can see um I have if it was a main idea uh that I wanted to put in if I was planning a story uh this is a tool you could use so uh I'm not going through the whole process how to use Lucid chart just showing how easy it is to use add-ons so again if you're interested in the add-ons go up to add-ons click get add-ons and you can scroll through if you want to get rid of an add-on let's say this Lucid chart I didn't want it anymore just go back to your add-ons click manage add-ons and you'll get the ones that you have installed just click on it click manage and you can see there's a remove button right there and you click it and if I go back you can see it's gone it's that simple so take a look at of the add-ons it might make your life a little bit simpler or your students