New Year's Resolutions

Happy Holiday Break! Let the egg nog and gift wrapping commence.  And while you’re at it I just want to quickly share a possible New Years Resolution activity.

As someone who has spent her career as a public school and college librarian, I have lived a wonder life of words, by design.  Numbers, not so much.  Sure I can create a rudimentary library budget in a spreadsheet, but I want to know how to make a spreadsheet work for me; to analyze the data; to use the numbers to tell a story or support ideas. Pivot tables? Charts?  Bring them on!

Google is offering a free course on Google Sheets through the online learning platform, Coursera. There are over 5800 people registered, BUT the hitch is it begins December 20.  It's a 5 week course, free to audit or $29 if you want a certificate.

Here's the link to register: https://www.coursera.org/learn/getting-started-with-google-sheets?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=FY19-Q3-global-demandgen-website-other-EduVideos

I plan on drinking my egg nog while I work through the lessons using our MiFi and my iPad in our little van camper as we travel to Connecticut for Christmas with family, and then onward to Cape Cod for dogwalking along the Canal. Since learning something new is always one of my resolutions, I can check that box with this course.  Are there any other 'word' people out there who want to be fluent in Good Sheets? Pop on over to the Coursera link and we can learn together!

Enjoy your family and friends this holiday season!

More Updates to G Suite Applicaitons

Seems like just a couple weeks ago I was writing about how Google frequently updates its applications to improve user experience--oh wait, I did just say that!  Well, there are some brand new updates in Google Sites....

Image Carousel Update
I hope you've had a chance to use use the new-ish feature of image carousels in Google Sites--such a great way to save space on a web page, and to include lots of interest with multiple photos.  Here's my previous post  with an example.  Google is rolling out an update to make the carousel element even better with two brand new features:

• add captions to each photo in the carousel--yay!
• adjust the transition speed between photos, so they don't going flying by too quickly

Table of Contents Update

A second improvement to Google Sites is an update to the Table of Contents.  I use this often on a website I manage and it's a super way for people click a link on the top of your page to get quickly to content at the bottom.  Sometimes there's a heading in the Table of Contents you don't want to appear and it's simple to hide it.  Here's the 'eye' icon which appears next to each heading and you can choose which ones to display and which to hide.  

Button Update

And the last updated feature in Sites is Buttons.  Creating a button is a great element to create a visual link to another page on your site or to a link outside your website.  Google has added multiple styles for buttons.  There are now three choices:  filled, outlined, or just text.  You can of course, change the text to words of your choice--it doesn't have to say 'button!'  My most frequent use of the button element is to link to a Google Form.  If you have a sign up on your classroom website for teacher conferences, field trips, or something similar, creating a button that says 'Sign Up,' 'Register,' or 'Take the Survey' is a much cleaner, obvious choice for your users.

It's a busy time of year in the classroom, and these new updates might take a couple weeks to roll out to everyone, but give them a try when you have a moment.