Similar to Microsoft Word, Google apps support the creation of templates for documents with particular pre-formatted layout and style requirements. Templates are a simple–often overlooked–tool for saving time by eliminating the repetitive processes of formatting and layout. Templates help reduce cognitive overhead by allowing users to focus on creating content.
How do you follow news online? We have so much access to information we can’t possibly read it all. Do you remember the episode of "I Love Lucy" where Lucy works at a candy factory? She has to wrap all the chocolate coming down the belt but it keeps moving faster and faster. The pace of news today can feel like this.
Have you noticed Google has been growing their list of Chrome-related products? The names are similar but the features are notably different. I was losing track of this growing Chrome universe. This article is an attempt to explain each tool and how you could use it in a classroom.
Is it possible to distill instructions to mere seconds using an animated GIF? While reading the Google product blog, I noticed they use this strategy to illustrate new functionality within their apps. These short demonstrations helped me understand new functionality without requiring me to launch the actual application and click around.
Maps are a natural and efficient way to communicate spatial information. More than serving as tools to help us think about physical space, they are useful for visualizing and organizing information within the context of a particular place. Maps provide a concrete landscape on which to present a story tied to a place that can provide visually compelling interpretation of data.
Many of us use video in our classes, but sometimes we forget that video is a media format that is not as equally accessible to all viewers. Viewers who are hearing impaired will not be able to hear the voices, music, or background audio we include in our video. It is our responsibility to take steps to ensure that we make video content accessible for as many of our viewers as possible.
Do you remember virtual worlds? They haven’t gone anywhere, but back in the middle of the last decade, 2006-2009, they were getting a good deal more attention than they are now. Names from the automotive industry, news agencies, music labels, and even universities jumped in to see what all of the hype was about. Worlds such as Second Life, Open Sim, Kaneva, and Blue Mars were just some of the virtual spaces people could walk into.
Prezi separates itself from conventional presentation platforms by breaking free of the linear nature of slides. That being said, how do we effectively take advantage of its unique capabilities? One of Prezi’s greatest features is the way in which it presents multimedia content. It enables presenters to guide viewers through images, text, video, and audio media in a way that highlights the relationships between the information and ideas presented.
Creating an interactive timeline can provide perspective on how a topic has evolved, and how events occurred along the way. By using a Google Spreadsheet template and resources on the website,Timeline JS, you (or your students) can quickly create a multimedia-rich timeline.
Augmented Reality (AR) has been mentioned in the last couple years’ Horizon Reports for Higher Education as one of the latest upcoming technologies for education. You may have heard of new wearable technologies such as Google Glass that will bring AR to the masses in the near future.
