A Round-up of The Latest Google Docs Features for Teachers

March 12, 2016
Over the last few weeks, Google Docs released a number of important features that enhanced its overall performance. We have reviewed each of these features in separate posts in the past. For those of you who have missed these updates, check them out below:

1- Document Outline

Document Outline allows you to easily structure your documents. Outline is also a great tool to help you quickly navigate the different parts of your documents. Once activated, Document outline displaces a pane to the left of the page featuring all the headers contained in your document. Clicking on each of these headers will jump you straight to its corresponding section. You don’t even have to manually apply headers, Google Docs smartly detects the different sections of your documents and generates an outline accordingly which you can edit as you want.

Here is how to open a document outline in Google Docs:
Open a Google Docs document then click ‘tools’ and select ‘document outline’.

2- Convert Google Docs to EPUB

Google Docs released yesterday another new interesting feature that allows users to download their Google documents in EPUB format. And as you know, EPUB is a file format that you can download and read in different digital devices (smartphones, tablets, computers) and through various apps and e-readers. With this new feature, you will be able to create and share digital content that can be read on a ‘diverse range of screen sizes and devices’. To convert a Google document into EPUB, you simply click on ‘File’, then hover over ‘Download as’ and choose ‘EPUB publication’ as shown in the GIF below.

3- Voice Commands in Google Docs

This is basically a voice enabled formatting functionality that allows Docs users to easily edit and format their documents using voice commands. This new feature comes to complete the Voice Typing functionality that was added to Google Docs a few months ago. Users of Google Docs are now able to not only compose documents and write down notes without touching their keyboards but are also able to format their documents using speech commands such as “copy,” “insert table,” and “highlight.” You can check the full list of commands from this page.