3 Google Drive Tools for Creating Professional-looking Diagrams and Flowcharts

April 9, 2015
We received a couple of requests from teachers asking for Google Drive add-ons to use with Google Docs to create and integrate diagrams and flowcharts. The first tool that came to mind is Gliffy for we have reviewed it here a couple of times but then we did a further search in Google Drive app store and picked two more to add to this list. For those of you looking for apps to create concept and mind maps in Google Drive, this selection is a good place to start with.

1-Gliffy

Gliffy is a very good diagram editor that is integrated with Google Drive allowing users to easily and instantly create and share beautiful diagrams and flowcharts. Gliffy provides a wide variety of features that include:

• Easy-to-use diagram editor helps you communicate your ideas quickly
• Makes any idea look more professional and polished
• Extensive shape library with hundreds of industry-standard shapes and connectors
• Snap-to-grid, drawing guides, shape alignment and distribution tools
• Also great for drawing a basic diagram, flow chart, UI mockup, site map, network map, business process model, org chart, floor plan, venn diagram, SWOT analysis, and other technical diagrams.

2- Draw.io

Draw.io is another powerful diagramming add-on to use on Google Docs. Its editor has all kinds of shapes and materials to help you create both simple and advanced diagrams. Draw.io is completely free and does not require any registration.

3- Web Sequence Diagrams

“Sequence Diagrams let you describe how different parts your system communicate with each other. But drawing sequence diagrams can take hours with traditional tools. Your clients and colleagues will be impressed if you can make large-scale changes as easily as copying and pasting text, instead of spending your time moving lines around with a mouse. With this add-on, you write your sequence interactions directly into your documentation. With a click of the button, they are converted into professionally formatted UML sequence diagrams in a variety of styles.”

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Two Useful Google Drive Tools for Teachers

April 9, 2015
Below are two excellent Google Drive add-ons to use with your Google Docs. The first one in the list is an application that enables users to generate tag clouds from documents that have over 50 words. The second add-on provides users with a super easy way to integrate images from the popular OpenClipart right into a Google doc. The app's gallery has over 50.000 pictures to choose from.

1- Tag Cloud Generator

"Tag Cloud Generator creates a tag cloud in the side bar from any Google Docs document that contains more than 50 words. Use this add-on to quickly assess what your emerging theme is, how to best categorize your document, or if it is someone's else's document - find out the theme of the document without reading it. Stop words are automatically removed."

2- Open Clip Art

"Openclipart provides many of the best clipart images available and now you can search and insert them right into your Google Document. With more than 50,000 images in the library you will be able to find that perfect image to liven up your document or make a favorable impression to that new client."

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Here Is A Good Way to Grade and Annotate Google Drive Files

March 25, 2015
Looking for a good tool to help you annotate files on Google Drive? Challkup is the answer. Chalkup is a great web tool that allows teachers to create classes and share different study materials on a message board that students can access in real-time. Chalkup lets you post discussion prompts, add comments to discussions, distribute announcements and assignments and view files.

Chalkup also provides a very good functionality called MarkUp annotator that allows teachers to easily annotate files and documents they receive from their students. MarkUp is ideal for grading students assignments. It lets you comment, draw and highlight right on the file and students can always submit additional versions of the file. Chalkup has recently integrated rubrics for teachers to use when assessing students assignments and projects.Watch the video below to learn how to use rubrics for grading:

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A Quick Way for Students to Hand in Their Google Drive Assignments and Papers

March 22, 2015
There are several ways students can use to turn in their assignments through Google Drive. The most popular of them all is through a shared folder. As a teacher you can create a shared folder on your Drive and invite students to join and submit their papers. You can learn more about Google Drive shared folders from this link.

However, if you are looking for a simpler and quicker way to enable students to turn in their assignments, Chalkup has the answer. For those of you not familiar with this tool, Chalkup is a powerful application integrated with Google Drive and which allows teachers and students to do a variety of things with their Drive including, annotating docs, sharing Drive files, grading papers, and many more. Chalkup also offers this handy feature that allows students to instantly turn in their assignments and papers they crated on Google Drive.To do so, they simply need to sign in to their Chalkup, and under "turn in your assignment" they click on "Upload from Google Drive" as is shown in the image below:

Watch this video to learn more about how Chalkup works.

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The Best 4 Google Drive Tools for Creating Mind Maps and Diagrams

March 18, 2015
Looking for some good mind mapping and brainstorming tools? Below are 4 of the best tools we would recommend for you. All of these tools are integrated with Google Drive which means that you can easily create, edit and share your mind maps and diagrams right from your Drive.Also, these tools support real-time collaboration, a feature ideal for students group work. Different participants can work on the same mind map with the ability to see each others edits as they happen.

1- MindMeister

This is by far the most popular of them all. MindMeister is a very good tool students can use to create mindmaps and brainstorm complex topics.  Mind maps can include a wide variety of multimedia including: text, images, icons, links, and attachments. It also supports offline editing and syncing.  Mind maps can be exported to Word, PowerPoint, PDF, and in the form of an image.

2- Lucidchart

“Lucidchart is a visual collaboration tool that makes drawing diagrams fast and easy.  Work together with an unlimited number of others to create and edit diagrams in real time, with changes merged and synced instantaneously -- great for team collaboration and working with clients. Because it's web-based, Lucidchart is the perfect alternative to Microsoft Visio for Mac, Windows, Linux and more.”

3- Mindomo

This is another excellent tool for creating mind maps. Students can use it to   visually outline complex concepts, tasks, ideas, and other related information in a structured form. Mindomo also allows you to embed videos and files in your maps and provides you different layouts to work with ( mind map, concept map, org chart, tree org chart) and many more.


4- MindMup

MindMup is a free online mind mapping tool that works seamlessly with Google Drive. Like the previous tools, MindMup supports real-time collaborative mind mapping and cloud storage. MindMup is available everywhere: you can access your maps with a browser or a mobile device, and cloud storage ensures you have access to your data where ever you are, and the application works nicely with both desktop, tablet and mobile browsers.

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A Wonderful Google Drive Tool to Insert Different Accents in Your Docs

March 3, 2015
Easy Accents is definitely a must have Google Docs add-on for students, teachers, educators and anyone else who write using different language formats. Easy  Accents enables you to easily insert accents for different languages directly into your Google Doc. The add-on supports a wide variety of accents that include: Esperanto Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Māori, Português, Sámi, Spanish to mention a few. And only recently Easy Accents added a new feature that lets you insert capital accents in your docs.

To start using Easy Accent, you need to install it from this page. After granting it permission to access your Google Docs, you simply click on “Add-ons” and select “Easy Accents” and then click the language you want to use. Accents of that language will be displayed on the sidebar of your Google doc from which you can directly insert them into your paper. Watch the video below, created by Greg Lawrence, to see this add-on in action.

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Professionally Designed Templates to Use in Google Docs and Sheets

March 2, 2015
Template Gallery is a useful Google Doc add-on for teachers and students. It provides you with a variety of professionally designed templates for your documents and spreadsheets. Most of these templates are not available in Google Drive’s public gallery. Examples of the templates provided by this add-on include: calendars, schedules, invoices, time sheets, budgeting tools, letters, resumes, financial calculators, and more.

To use Template Gallery, you need to install the extension from this page. Once installed you can then browse through the gallery.”When you find a template you want to use, click on the Copy to Google Drive button and the add-on will save a copy of the template into the root folder of your Google Drive.”

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A Very Good Tool to Create Charts from Spreadsheets and Insert Them into Google docs

February 25, 2015
The Charts Builder is a Google Docs add-on that we have discovered while we were curating google Forms Tools for Teachers. Charts Builder allows you to build a chart from the data you have in your Google spreadsheet and then insert it directly into your document.

The Charts Builder allows you to select the type of chart and a spreadsheet. Everything is integrated and your chart will be added to the line you select in only 5 simple steps:

1-Open Charts from the add-ons menu
2- Select a chart type. (The Chart Builder will explain how to organize your data)
3- Click the load data button and choose your spreadsheet
4- Now you can drag to select your data
5- That’s it; just click the Insert button.

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Two New Google Drive Updates You Should Know About

February 24, 2015
Here is a very interesting set of updates added today to Google Docs. These updates are especially helpful for student researchers and teachers who prefer to use Google Docs to write long research papers and theses.  Google Docs now allows you to customize how the headers and footers appear on the first page of your documents.With this update, you will be able to have a specific header and footer for the first page of your documents. "After inserting a header or footer in your document you’ll see a new checkbox--just tick it and you’ll be able to set a different header and footer on the first page."

Another important update is the addition of a menu for  inserting page numbers which lets you customize how and where you start your page numbers.

Courtesy of Google for Education

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An Easy and Quick Way to Grade Quizzes on Google Drive Using Super Quiz Tool

February 22, 2015
Super Quiz is an excellent Google Sheets add-on that allows teachers to add some amazing functionalities to the quizzes they create through Google Forms. For instance, when you create a quiz, you only need to complete it once with an answer key and all future submissions will be automatically graded according to the answers you provided. Another important feature of Super Quiz is that it enables you to get a break down of class understanding and a list of incorrect students' answers  for each question in case you want to stage an intervention.

Also, “By filling out a few cells of information, you can also generate personalized differentiated written feedback emailed to students as soon as they submit a response. No need to monitor and ‘re-grade’ - just set-up and go!You can split your quiz in up to 4 different topics, and provide specific feedback on each. If you don’t want to email students, you can choose to print feedback on a 2x2 array, too.”

Watch the video below to learn more about Super Quiz

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A Very Good Google Doc App for Helping Students with Their Learning

February 21, 2015
Texthelp Study Skills is a very good Google Doc add-on. Students can use it to help them with their studies. It allows them to select, highlight, and group content for review and learning. The process is very simple: open a Google Doc, highlight the key areas in the text you are interested in and click on “Collect Highlights” to extract and place it in a new document (by color or location) for students or others to review.

Teachers can use Texthelp Study Skills for a variety of purposes including: helping students identify and group key facts together, assisting students with their vocabulary learning by indicating new words to learn. It can also be used for collecting data and materials for a research project.

Texthelp Study Skills is free for 30 days after which you  can continue to use one color highlighter and can collect and clear highlights. To keep using all four color highlighters, you can purchase a subscription to Read&Write for GoogleTM, a  comprehensive set of reading, writing, and studying support tools for Google Docs, Web, PDFs, and ePubs. Read&Write for Google is available in the chrome store.

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A Handy Google Drive Tool to Create Animated Presentations and Engaging Educational Videos

February 19, 2015
In a post we published a few months ago, we talked about WeVideo and how teachers  use it to create videos and short animations in Google Drive. Today, we are introducing you to PowToon Edu, another equally powerful tool to use to create engaging videos and animated presentations.

Pontoon Edu allows you to animate difficult topics and engage your students using a wide variety of tools. You can easily drag and drop characters and props into your slides and assign it an animation, choose from different pre-designed templates and style libraries.Videos and animated presentations you create through PowToon Edu can be exported in various ways. You can share them on YouTube or Facebook, download them to your computer. You can also export them as MP4 file to embed in your classroom blog or website.

Watch the video below to learn more about PowToon Edu

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3 Important Google Drive Tips for Teachers

February 17, 2015
For those of you who haven’t seen them yet, Google for Education has recently added some interesting posts covering a bunch of handy features to use on your Google Drive. Here are the three most interesting updates I want to bring to your attention:

1- How to search  Google for publicly shared Google Docs 
In this animated picture, Google For Education illustrates the process of using Google search engine  to look for Google docs that are publicly shared in the net. Here is how it works: head over to Google and type in : site:docs.google.com followed by the title of the doc you are looking for in inverted commas.






2- Download Docs in PDF format
Google Docs allows users to easily save and share their docs in PDF format. Here is how it works: in your Google Doc, click on “file”then on “download" and select “PDF Document”.






3- Using Research Tool to add citations
In the video below, Dean Stokes visually demonstrates the process of adding citations in a Google Doc using the integrated research tool.

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Pixlr- A Great Google Drive Tool for Editing Pictures

February 7, 2015
Pixlr Editor is a great photo editing tool that you can use to work on the pictures and images you want to use with your students or in your presentations. Pixlr is easy and simple to use and works right from your web browser. It is also integrated with Google Drive.

Pixlr offers a bunch of interesting tools and features that you would normally find in desktop applications such as Gimp, Paint or Photoshop. "Some of the tools included are, red eye reduction, spot heal tool, drawing tools, clone tools, sharpen and blur tools and many more.The Adjustments include some advanced concepts like Levels, Curves, Cross process, Desaturate, Auto levels, Hue/Saturation and Brightness/Contrast."

Watch this video from Corey Jeffers to learn how you can link Pixlr to your Google Drive.

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Chalkup- A Wonderful Google Drive Tool for Teachers

February 6, 2015
I just learned through an email from Justin Chando about this interesting update to Chalkup. The folks in Chalkup have finally made the move to Google Drive and created a seamless integration of Chalkup with Google Drive. Chalkup is a great web tool that allows teachers to create classes and share different study materials on a message board that students can access in real-time. Chalkup lets you post discussion prompts, add comments to discussions, distribute announcements and assignments and view files.

Some things that are unique to the Chalkup Google integration are:

• Grade and annotate files inline with drawing, highlighting, and area comments
• Use a custom Rubric and attach it right to the grade
• Manages all Google Drive file permissions automatically 
• View Google Drive files without needing to go to Drive, and Students save any type of document to their own Drive
• Real Discussions with nested comments.

Watch the video below to learn more about the integration of Chalkup and Google Drive:

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3 Wonderful Google Apps Proficiency Checklists for Teachers and Educators

January 25, 2015
Below are three excellent Google Apps checklists to help you make the best of  Google Apps in your instruction and also in your professional growth as a teacher and educator. These checklists are prepared by Google certified teacher Neil Charlet and are part of a series Neil is actually working on titled” Google Apps Proficiency Checklists”. Still to come in this series are : Google Calendar Proficiency checklist and Google Gmail Proficiency checklist. Follow Neil to stay updated of his upcoming work.

Here are the three checklists Neil prepared so far:

1- Drive Proficiency checklist
This is a comprehensive checklist that features almost everything teachers and students should be able to do on  Google Drive.

2- Chromebook  basic functions and features
As its title indicates, this checklist maps out the different Chromebook features and hacks. Almost all the tips are hyperlinked so you can learn more about each of them.

3- Google Sites Checklist
This one includes everything you need to know to better use Google Sites in your instruction. Again everything is hyperlinked so you can learn more about them.

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Teachers Visual Guide to Connecting Google Drive to Edmodo

January 25, 2015
In today's post, I am sharing with you this step by step visual guide to help you connect your Google Drive to your Edmodo account. The benefits of establishing such a connection is that it enables you to access all the documents, files and folders saved in your Drive right in your Edomodo  page. From there you can select and arrange these documents and files into folders you created on Edmodo. You can also share them directly with your students or on your classroom page on Edmodo with one click.
Here is how to connect your Google  Drive to your Edmodo account.

1- First sign in to your Edmodo and click on the "library" icon

2- Select "Google Drive"

3- Click on " Connect with Google Drive" and grant access to Edmodo

4- Once access is granted you will be able to see your Drive docs and files in your Edmodo account. To share any file or doc, click on it and then choose from the button above whether to add it to a folder on Edmodo or share it with others.

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Google Released 3 Powerful Updates to Mobile Google Drive

January 22, 2015
After the recent updates to Google Classroom , Google released today a new set of interesting updates to its iOS and Android apps for Docs, Sheets, and Slides.  Here is a brief overview of what these new features will enable you to do on these apps:

1- Editing 
Some new editing functionalities have been added to the three apps. Users now can do real-time spell checking in documents, hide rows and columns in spreadsheets, and group shapes in presentations.




2- New safety feature
 Besides the two-step verification measure Google offers to its users, from today on “Google Docs supports Touch ID on iOS, so you can unlock Docs, Sheets and Slides with your unique fingerprint.”

3- New update for the visually disabled
For those suffering for a visual impairment of some sort, Google updated its apps  TalkBack   ( for Android) and VoiceOver  (for iOS) to enable users to “ create, edit, and share files in Docs, Sheets and Slides. The updated apps also respond well to screen magnification, in case you need to zoom in for a closer look.’

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A Quick Way to Access and Work on your Google Drive

January, 2015
Google Docs Quick Create is a Chrome extension that allows you to quickly create Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and drawings with one click. Instead of going to your Drive, clicking on “new” and selecting a service you want to use ( which is quite a process), Google Doc Quick Create provides you with a simple and time-saving shortcut. Here is how it works:

First head over to Chrome web store and download the extension. Once downloaded, Drive icon will appear on your browser bar. Clicking on that icon will pull up a menu featuring all the Google Drive services. Click on the one you want to work on and there you go. As simple as that.

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10 Ways to Integrate Google Drawings in Your Teaching

December 29, 2014
Google Drawings is a tool that is often overlooked by teachers. Being part of Google Drive, Drawings has some powerful features hat make it an ideal platform for creating educational posters, visuals, mind maps an many more. I have been using it to create several of the posters I shared here in the past and I find it really handy. Here is a step by step visual guide to help you learn how to use Drawings  to create posters.

I am also sharing with you this excellent visual from Shake Up Learning featuring more ideas on what you can do with Google Drawings. To access Google Drawings: Head over to your Google Drive, click on "New" then on "More" and select " Google Drawings".

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