These are the new features from Google docs that are worthy of trying.
1. TABLE TEMPLATES
Google docs have been upgraded to include table templates and drop-down chips. These are two new enhancements for a flexible and smart canvas for collaboration. This is found in the insert tab and then select table. The table has another drop-down menu with templates and an option for customization.
Go to the insert tab then as usual you look for the table option and the drop-down arrow leads you to table templates that have :
The product roadmap, review tracker, projects assets, and launch content creator.
The product roadmap template has a table that has a project, status, related fields, and as table headings. The status has the drop-down menu already plugged in for you. However, if you click on add/edit options you can customize the options.
2. DROP DOWN MENU
You can also create drop-down menus! Wow! This is useful in cloze passages or exercises. Students choose an option from a given set of answers.
Let's look at the passage on prepositions below :
Last Saturday my mother had a big surprise for my sister and I. We went visiting the amusement park! Excitedly we packed our lunches and hopped into the car. Mother drove along the freeway and across town towards our destination. Finally, we arrived at Thrills and Chills Amusement park. We almost started running in a different direction! Mom told us it was important to stay together. We took turns deciding on rides. Fortunately, my favourite ride was right by my sister's favourite rollercoaster. We rode the rollercoasters bumper cars and racing boats together. At the end of the day we were exhausted from all the fun we all had. We pretended we were flying over rollercoaster tracks on the way home. I had a wonderful time with my family.
You may want your students to choose the correct prepositions from a list in the drop-down menu.
Let's copy the passage we want into our google docs. Let's highlight and copy and paste all our prepositions at the bottom and probably give them a subheading word bank as shown below.
Now we can use an add-on called doc tools to arrange the prepositions in alphabetical order. Install the add-on and after installation select all your words and look for the add-on from extensions or add-on and select it. Now check on sort the selection ascending. Your words will now be in ascending order alphabetically. We may need our students to cancel out every preposition that they would have selected so we look for checkboxes in our ribbon and the words will now have checkboxes.
Let's go to the insert menu and select the drop-down option. We will see that we have + New Drop-down, Launch status, and other preset Drop-downs. Let's select new Drop-down. On the template name, let's give it the name Prepositions . The first option 1 could be an instruction your students may want to have, for example you can write ________ or select or choose . Let's write the first word from our options on option 2. You can just copy and paste. After option 4 if you still have more options to add , then select + New Option.
You must now click save and you will be done.
Then you can just go to the next gap and repeat the process but before you insert new options you will see , "saved drop down list", and select it.
