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Google Docs has many uses in the classroom as a tool for creating documents and for collaboration. One of the newer features that Google have introduced is the ability to create web based forms that can collect data directly into a spreadsheet.

The idea behind Google forms is simple. In the Google Docs main page you select ‘New’ and then ‘Form’ from the menu, which takes you to the form editor. There you can enter a title and opening information for your form and begin to create your questions. Google gives you the choice of six types of question and you can mix them as you want in any form.

You continue to add questions until you have finished your form. At that point you save the form. You can embed the form in a website to be completed or you can use the link at the bottom of the form creator to share the webpage of the form. You might want to use a URL shortener to make the address easier.

Here is the address of my completed form

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pqWdwkQ2SenCigz8XGDgUOA

(and the shortened version is http://memurl.com/mefede)

Here is the same form embeded in the page

You can find out more about Google Docs and Google forms at the website docs.google.com

Google Docs is an online office suite, like a cut down version of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc). It runs in your web browser and stores your documents online making them available from any computer. Google Docs makes it easy to collaborate on and share Text documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

There are lots of applications for Google Docs in the classroom and I will discuss others in future posts. One application of the word processor part of Google Docs is to create quick and temporary web pages.

Because the word processor enables you to quickly edit documents with instructions and links you can write some instructions or information for a lesson just as you would on a worksheet, except that because you can publish it as a web page it can include links to other websites.

When you have finished your page, you can publish it (go to ‘share’, ‘publish as webpage’) and you will be given a link to your new web page. Here is one I created for this post:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfbtbm3h_52c747dtgd

This is now a webpage that you can send the students to in order to guide them through an online task. You can use a URL shortener as detailed in another post to make the address easier to share with the pupils. When I ran the above address through Memurl.com I got memurl.com/duvote which is much easier.

When you have finished using the page with a class you can either leave it published or unpublish it, but save it in Google Docs. That way you can come back to it, ammend it and use it again.

For more information about Google Docs visit the website docs.google.com. I will endevour to write about Google Docs in more detail soon.

So you have your lesson all set out in PowerPoint with your explanations ready. Now you want to show a website as part of your lesson. Normally that would mean closing the PowerPoint show and switching to your web browser to show the page you want, which takes time and could detract from your flow.

There is an alternative. Using a special PowerPoint plugin it is possible to have a live web page appear in a PowerPoint presentation. This is not just a screen shot, but acts just like your web browser and allows full navigation of whatever web sites you want.

The plugin is called LiveWeb and is available as a free download. When it has been installed (which is done as with any other program) you will see two new options at the bottom of the ‘Insert’ menu in PowerPoint. It is then easy to add a web pages to your Presentation as follows.

(Read the rest of this entry…)

Edit: When I first posted about the Drag and Drop Macro I neglected to give proper credit to and details about it’s author Hans W. Hofmann.

The code is free for personal use and you can find more details and some enhancements on Hans W. Hofmann’s website at http://test.lemitec.de/ppt/Powerpoint%20DragAndDrop.htm

Although PowerPoint is a great resource and can be used to create all sorts of resources for use in lessons, one of the problems with the way it is normally used is that it’s not very interactive.

Turning PowerPoint presentations from a linear series of slides into something that can be interacted with can be achieved using a variety of methods including hyperlinks (which I will discuss in a future post), action buttons and now drag and drop elements.

With drag and drop elements you can create interactive games and activities such as the activity matching words and their definitions in my demonstration presentation below.

This is possible using a special macro to set items within a PowerPoint presentation to be dragged and dropped. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to create macros or are not even sure what they are, the macro has been made for you and all that you need to do is:

1. Download the presentation below (which already contains the macro)
2. Add any slides that you want to make your presentation (either make them from scratch or copy them from an existing presentation)
3. Delete the instruction and example slides

There are more detailed instructions within the demo presentation, which will guide you through setting up PowerPoint to allow macros to run (only needs doing once) as well as adding your slides and setting things to be dragged and dropped.

I suggest that you keep a copy of the demo presentation safe so you always have the instructions and work on a second copy when you create each new presentation. But don’t worry if you forget, you can download it again from here. When you have finished your presentation you can save it as ‘Read only’ which will mean that the bits that have been dragged around will return to where they were.

Here is the demo presentation. You can download it using the link below (the drag and drop doesn’t work in the online version).

Download drag and drop demo presentation

I would guess that almost all teachers who have a projector use PowerPoint at some point. One thing that I find useful in helping to make the use of PowerPoint presentations as smooth as possible is keyboard shortcuts.

Instead of using the mouse to navigate the presentation using the keyboard makes a variety of actions quick and easy to access.

There are lots of shortcuts that can be used during presentations (as well as in editing), here are a few that I think are particularily useful:

• F5 – Start presentation

• Esc – End presentation

• B – Turn the screen black (press it again to continue the presentation)

• W – Turn the screen white (press it again to continue the presentation)

• Ctrl + P – Turn the pointer into a pen so that you can annotate the slide

• Ctrl + A – Change the pen back into a pointer

• E - Erase any annotations you have made with the pen on the slide

• Number + Enter – Jump to a slide by number (e.g. 5 + Enter would take you to slide 5)

• Home – Jump to the first slide

• A - Hide/show the pointer arrow (toggles between them)

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