By Alice Keeler

The ability to collaborate and access documents in the cloud with Google Apps has transformed what I can do with my students. And, as a Google Certified Teacher, I utilize these tools in my classroom on a daily basis.

I’ve learned the intricacies of these apps and discovered a variety of teacher hacks that make them even more effective for teaching. Try these 10 hacks from my blog to be more efficient with your favorite Google Apps.

1. Create Virtual Manipulatives

Use Google Draw to create manipulatives that students can collaborate on and use to represent their understanding of concepts. Learn more. 

2. Award Badges

Create badges for students in Google Draw and publish them to the web. Link to these images in a spreadsheet to keep them all organized.

3. Create Images Next to Text

Place text and images side by side with ease by creating tables in a Google Doc with a border width of zero.

More: Chromebooks in the Classroom: A Complete Guide

4. Connect Multiple Google Forms

View multiple sources of data in one Google Sheet spreadsheet by using a simple formula. Get a tutorial for creating the formula here.

5. Prompt Students to Make a Copy

Replace the /edit at the end of a Google Doc URL with /copy to provide templates to students. 

6. Create Virtual Office Hours in Google Classroom

Use a Google Hangout permalink in the “about” tab of Google Classroom to meet with students virtually. 

7. Create an Answer Key

When using Google Forms for formative assessment, fill out the form before the students using “answer” for the first name field and “key” for the last name field.

8. Create a Unique Link for Each Student

Pre-populate Google Forms with student data by using a concatenate formula in Google Sheet. Get the how-to tutorial here.

More: What Do Your Students’ Digital Footprints Look Like?

9. Easily Find Student Documents

Ask students to use a nonsense word in the title of their Google Doc to easily search for the documents in Google Drive.

10. Direct Comment

Make a comment in Google Docs and notify someone in one step by adding a plus sign and their email to the comment.

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