This week, I was fortunate enough to attend a Google webinar where they discussed a variety of new tools/features coming to Google Workspace between now and the beginning of next school year. I do not know the exact timing of when these things will be available, but I wanted to share some of the more exciting ones with you! As they are launched, I will be sure to let you know and with some of them - I will provide training opportunities.
Voting Chips
A quick way to gather a vote right within a Google Document! You will soon have a nice option for a simple "hands up" style survey rather than dealing with creating and sending a form.
Custom Building Blocks
You may (or may not) remember that Google Docs added "Building Blocks" such as meeting notes, email drafts, project trackers, etc. Soon, you will be able to create your own custom building block - essentially it's like creating a template that you can access from any blank document.
Reading Mode If you have students who struggle with distractions from ads or other content within websites or articles, Chrome will soon have a "Reading Mode" feature that will allow you to pop the text out to the side of the window and make adjustments to size, spacing, font, color, etc.
Interactive Questions in YouTube This is sort of Google's answer to EdPuzzle...from within Google Classroom, you will soon be able to assign students to watch a YouTube video. You can then incorporate questions into the video. This keeps them in Google Classroom rather than going to YouTube where they will encounter lots of distractions.
Practice Sets This one is potentially the biggest. From what I can gather, Practice Sets is something that will soon allow you to put an interactive "lesson" into Google Classroom that provides students with feedback as they submit responses. I don't know all the details yet, but the idea is that students can go through self-paced problems, enter their answer, and if they are wrong, they can see suggestions to help them find the correct answer. Math people...look at all of these math things!!
As I said, I will let you know as these tools become available. I suspect I will need to offer some training on the last two because they seem more complex. But I'm ready!
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