Four Important Google Drive Updates Teachers Should Know about
October 5, 2016
Google has recently changed the name of its popular service Google Apps for Education to G Suite for Education. With this change comes a bunch of new features that have been added to some of apps included in the G Suite for Education. These features use machine intelligence to facilitate and add more functionalities to Google Apps. Below is a quick overview of the main updates in this regard:
1- Google Sheets
Explore in Google Sheets is a new feature added to Google Sheets to allow students to create smarter sheets. Explore makes it easy for students to ‘summarize spreadsheet data with automated charts and insights’. Students who can’t write formulas can now use Explore to instantly convert questions into formula. ‘Students can simply enter a question using natural language and Explore in Google Sheets will use Natural Language Processing to translate the question into a formula and offer an instant answer.’
2- Google Docs
Explore has also been added to Google Docs bringing with it a number of features such as the ability to search for and find related documents from Drive, automatic recommended topics to learn about, and for educators, the ability to conduct image searches and get results limited to those that ‘comply with SafesSearch and are approved to use with Creative Commons’.
3- Google Slides
Explore in Google Slides brings new features to help students create polished presentations. Explore offers a number of layout suggestions to help students better format their slides.
4- Google Calendar
‘Google Calendar uses machine intelligence to help you easily find a time when invitees are free, and it also suggests available rooms based on your previous bookings. And, when the list of invitees grows long and no times are available, Calendar will suggest times across the group where the conflicts are easiest to resolve, such as recurring 1:1 meetings’.
Google has recently changed the name of its popular service Google Apps for Education to G Suite for Education. With this change comes a bunch of new features that have been added to some of apps included in the G Suite for Education. These features use machine intelligence to facilitate and add more functionalities to Google Apps. Below is a quick overview of the main updates in this regard:
1- Google Sheets
Explore in Google Sheets is a new feature added to Google Sheets to allow students to create smarter sheets. Explore makes it easy for students to ‘summarize spreadsheet data with automated charts and insights’. Students who can’t write formulas can now use Explore to instantly convert questions into formula. ‘Students can simply enter a question using natural language and Explore in Google Sheets will use Natural Language Processing to translate the question into a formula and offer an instant answer.’
2- Google Docs
Explore has also been added to Google Docs bringing with it a number of features such as the ability to search for and find related documents from Drive, automatic recommended topics to learn about, and for educators, the ability to conduct image searches and get results limited to those that ‘comply with SafesSearch and are approved to use with Creative Commons’.
3- Google Slides
Explore in Google Slides brings new features to help students create polished presentations. Explore offers a number of layout suggestions to help students better format their slides.
4- Google Calendar
‘Google Calendar uses machine intelligence to help you easily find a time when invitees are free, and it also suggests available rooms based on your previous bookings. And, when the list of invitees grows long and no times are available, Calendar will suggest times across the group where the conflicts are easiest to resolve, such as recurring 1:1 meetings’.
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