Doodle isn’t free

Posted on January 13, 2023 by Nichole M Gladky

Doodle helps us send out polls to find out when people are available to have meetings. Doodle has become so popular it is now a noun. “Do a Doodle”.

If you do a Doodle you will find that they change their freemium policies often. Some have reported getting a lot of spam after doing a Doodle.

To avoid this, here is a simple spreadsheet to see when people are available. If you share it correctly, then any trusted recipient (without a google account) can edit the spreadsheet.

Make a copy of this file:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cEh8_mcTiU1Fc1AgaCARvljsP5jjOEUczNaXeFEXwkE/edit#gid=1965835778

Options for Communicating with your Audience (Students, Class, Team, Committee, Department)

Posted on June 18, 2019 by Nichole M Gladky

Email may not be the most effective tool to communicate. Many get an abundance of messages each day and therefore emails get ignored or fall of the page. When I get a ticket about creating a contact group I ask what will be communicated and why are you sending it because that matters. Here are our options:

Personal Contact lists in Google Mail

Great for small groups and committee work. But if you have more than a handful that you need to communicate with, setting up a Personal Contact Group might not be worth your time because you have to search for each individual, click on the 3-dots and select the Label you want to add them to.

While you can share your contacts, you cannot share personal contact lists. It’s all or nothing.

If you want to copy and paste a list of names from a spreadsheet, use a Google Group.

Google Groups

A Google Group is a single email address that disperses a message to many. You have to request these. You can designate others to manage the group and that way sending announcements will not be all on your shoulders. You can set it up so that members can email the group like a listserv or restrict it so that only Managers can email the group.

You can also share Google Drive files with the group and invite the group to meetings via Google Calendar. Adding a new member will give them access to files and future meetings.

If you are intending to email students for your department however, you may want a Blackboard Organization.

Brightspace Organization

Works great for keeping students of majors/minors abreast of what is going on in the department. You can use it to send announcements or as a one-stop-shopping site for documents and forms. Best of all when a student enrolls or drops the major/minor they will be added or removed the next day.

Yammer

Create a free-flowing dialogue with your team as well as sharing documents and links using Yammer groups. Group members have to option to opt-out of receiving notifications.

Broadcast Email

Faculty and staff may send out official-looking announcements to the all or some of the campus community or to a list of campus individuals with our Broadcast email system. This will help prevent your message from automatically going to spam.

SBYou

It can be used as a Blog or a static site. If we focus on the Blog page (this page you are looking one such page), down at the bottom you will see the ability to give your 2 cents in the form of a comment. Additionally, you will see a subscribe button to get new posts (it’s your choice unlike emails that pile on in your inbox).

Chat.google.com

It’s like Slack! You can create chat rooms for your team to have on going collaboration.

Where is gmail’s Mark as Unread?

Posted on June 14, 2019 by Nichole M Gladky

There has been an unannounced change that I think would annoy the community.

Gmail’s Mark as Unread as been moved out of the 3-dot top menu:

It’s not there when you check off a message in your inbox:

It still is available when you are reading a message, under the 3-dots menu on the right, but this is not helpful from your inbox!:

Here it is!

You can also right click on a message from your inbox:

Embedding PowerPoint into a Website

Posted on January 31, 2019 by Nichole M Gladky

If your website has the option for you to use HTML code, you can embed a PowerPoint slideshow from a LinkedIn account and using Slideshare (which was acquired by LinkedIn 2012). Slideshare will generate the embed code for you.

Create or Log into a Linkedin account.
Click on Work ▼
Click Slideshare
Upload your PowerPoint presentation
Click on Share > copy the Embed code
In SBYOU, edit a page or post, click on the TEXT tab and paste this code the body of the post/page.

Example:

How to make an omelet master from Nichole Gladky

Creating Online Video Content Using PowerPoint and YouTube

Posted on May 5, 2017 by Nichole M Gladky

Your PowerPoint presentations can easily be narrated and uploaded to YouTube. Why YouTube? Because any device can render the video and you can also add closed captioning.

Narrate your slides and save it as an MP4 (video format) in PowerPoint.
Upload your MP4 to YouTube.
Add closed captioning in YouTube

And if you want to:

Add background music from YouTube’s music library
Upload your video to a Google Form to assess or just take roll
To ensure that your audience has actually visited your form here, click on the settings gear, and check off “Collect email address” and “Restrict to Stony Brook University users”. Work/School email addresses will be collected in the spreadsheet of your form.

What wrong with this email? 4 Hints to catching a Phish.

Posted on May 5, 2017 by Nichole M Gladky

I am referencing the sophisticated email attack that happened May 3rd, 2017. It happened to many organizations, not just us. Let’s break it down:

Here is an example:

Innocent enough, right? You may know the sender.. But you may question why he or she is sending you a document with no name out of the clear blue sky. That is hint #1

Hint #2: He or she sent the email to hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I don’t belong to a group called hhhhhhhhh…

You can take a closer look and you should do this often.

Clicking this down-pointing arrow can reveal if an email was sent by an actual Stony Brook account (which in this case it was, and which is why we are calling it a sophisticated phishing attempt) and who the email is actually sent to.

If you did click the blue Open in Docs button, you would have been prompted to give the document access to your contacts. This is a bold hint (#3) it’s a scam, because it’s not logical that in order to VIEW a document it would need access to YOUR CONTACTS.

NOTE: From now until forever, you are the guardians of your accounts and data– whether that be personal or work. You will be phished by email, phone, websites, and regular mail. It is up to you to question the authenticity of what is being asked of you. Take a minute and just “Google it”.

One easy way to do this is to highlight > right-click anything and then click Search Google for…..:

If you wish to be more of a trained-eye on these sort of things you can take the safecomputing.stonybrook.edu training, come to a DoIT Training’s workshop or request a customized workshop for your team.

What does an official Shared Document with Google Drive look like? (This is hint# 4)

It has Google’s stamp all over it.

Here is the phishing attempt screenshot again for you to compare:

Also, in your inbox, you can click the View button:

Editing Microsoft Office Files in Google Drive

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Nichole M Gladky

What a pain. We want to use Google Apps’ unlimited storage and ease of sharing, but we are comfortable using Word, Excel, & Powerpoint.

In many cases, Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides provide many functions the average user will need. For advanced functionality, like creating a Table of Contents, Works Cited page, Labels, Pivot tables, and Narrated Slides you would need to use MS Office, but really how often do you do these things?

Change is hard, we go with what we know. Therefore, I have reviewed below several options for using Google Drive to store MS Office files, or any type of file for that matter.

Google Drive Sync
Right-Click > Open With
Chrome Extension: Office Editing for Docs, Sheets and Slides
Google Drive Plugin for Microsoft Office (Winner)

Using Google Drive Sync (downloading Google Drive in Settings)

This is a great option that allows you to drag and access MS Office files from your computer and open them in their respective application (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).

However, this is a SYNCing option which means that files are stored on your computer and then synchronized to the cloud. You are still using hard drive space on your computer. You will not be able to use the UNLIMITED storage space because you do not have UMLIMITED storage space on your computer.

You can limit which folders you’d like to sync! BUT, you may only sync top level folders, not a folder that lives within a folder.

Also, you must be an administrator of your machine to download this.

Right-clicking on an Office file to Open With a Google Doc

Don’t be fooled by this one.

This option is a GREAT tool to CONVERT an Office file into a Google file, but then to keep your sanity, you should remove the original Office file to ensure everyone views and edits the correct file.

Every time you right-click on this file and choose Open With, you are making a CONVERTED, COPY of the file. If you are not careful, you will have multiple copies of the same file with different data.

Want to simply Go Google all the way and have all of your files converted to a Google file? You can click on > Settings and then check off “Convert uploaded files to Google Docs editor format”

Then from this point forward every file you upload will be converted.

Notes about Right ClickOpen > with:

Google Drive does not overwrite files with the same name. So you can have many files with the same name.
To prevent copies from being made when using Open with, you can fix this inherent flaw by installing the extension below:

A Chrome Extension for Minor Edits

Office Editing for Docs, Sheets and Slides

A nice extension that will allow you to open the Google document editor and give you the options to

Add and remove text
Bold, italicize, underline text
Indent
Add bullets

That is it; just minor edits.

Mac users: this is your best option. The plugin mentioned below is not available for Macs.

Google Drive Plugin for Microsoft Office

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/driveforoffice

This is the best option.

Here are the reasons why:

You do not need administrative rights on your computer to download and install this.
You can create new files, share files, open files, rename files, move files to other folders WITHOUT going to Google Drive (you do it all in Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
- The plugin’s features:
You have the full range of Office functions available to you.

The presentation and download guide

New Features: Google Calendar Attachments/Sharing & Customize Apps in App Launcher

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Nichole M Gladky

Here are 2 lovely new features to help work seem less like work!

You may have attached documents from Google Drive to Calendar Events, but found that you needed to share the doc before hand. Google has improved this feature and checks to see if your event guests have access and if they don’t, you can give them access all before sending the event! See this 2 minute explainer video:

Here is another feature I have been waiting for. We, us, the individual can now customize the location of the apps in our App Launcher. Power to the people!

Enjoy your work! And Explore!

Assessment Symposium 2015

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Nichole M Gladky

Today I had the pleasure of attending TLT’s Assessment Symposium for 2015.

I am a technology trainer, what does assessment have to do with me?

Assessment is about collecting data and using it to strengthen our programs. And Michael Heel points out that “as budgets tighten, ‘assessment for accountability’ becomes a big deal.” We can use assessment data to make strategic choices for future programs. Interestingly, Middle States says that “assessment results cannot reasonably be used for hiring, promotion, and tenure.” We assess for improvement as teaching and learning is an ever evolving process where the bar is ever raised. As in many fields, we should always be thinking about what we can be doing better.

While assessment offers insight, patterns, trends and strengths and weaknesses, thinking about assessment can inspire us to make improvements, stated Heel. After defining the benefits of assessment, Heel began talking about curriculum mapping. As it pertained to my audience, I considered a list of outcomes from broad to narrow and major to minor to redesign the “Assess what you’ve learn” portion of one of my workshops during a break. I really enjoyed this exercise partly because I got something tangible out of it and partly because it was an opportunity to focus and stretch some boundaries. Also it was attainable during a 20 minute break because in comparison, a workshop, as far as curriculum design goes, is a small animal to contain compared to a 16-week course evaluation.

After a great lunch, I had the pleasure to attend Ahmed Belazi’s presentation on “Using Qualtrics for Assessment.”

Let’s face it, you know as well as I do, that during all-day events, after lunch, focus drifts and naps sound delightful. Well, I can safely say Belazi’s enthusiasm and story telling and rapid-fire knowledge was better than caffeine!

I learned you can’t measure everything. What you are really doing is looking to describe something–to appreciate it. For a full picture you need a mix of methods to gain perspective. It is important to me to get a feel for what I can improve or keep in mind for every future workshop to stay on my game and do the best that I can at that moment. DoIT Training sends out anonymous feedback surveys after every workshop and I generally get at least a few people responding, but it is rarely 100%. Belazi related to me why: Survey fatigue (A-ha). We are surveyed and assessed quite often. And honestly, during busy times when solicited, non-priorities are pushed into the “later” pile. He also shared a spreadsheet that calculates what a good population sample size would be for 100, 1000, etc. recipients. It was very telling as to why we do not get a 100% response and why a sample is still good data. One idea he had to combat survey fatigue was provide a survey on the spot at the end of the workshop. I think I’d like to do this. I can simply create a link right on the desktop of the computers in the training room! Another way to get buy-in is to state the benefit of providing feedback, like stating “Because of past feedback on our workshops we are now able to provide you…”

After telling us how and why to survey, Belazi dove into one of the most diverse and robust online tools in the Universe: Qualtrics.

I am now a big fan because:

of the range of questions
the mobile preview
you can copy and paste choices for multiple choice questions from a text document
you can import from a specially formatted text document
- BTW: You can download a Google Form as a CSV and convert it into a text document that you’ll need to format to upload to Qualtrics. So, yeah, you CAN import a Google Form into Qualtrics
you can have your participants upload a file (like a writing sample) into your survey
Text piping is magical
there is a chat help
you can make reports public

I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation and the symposium as a whole. It was well put together.

My only feedback is that I really would have liked to attend all of the breakout sessions. Choosing one was hard.

Presenting with Multiple Google Presentations

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Nichole M Gladky

It is easy enough to sign into Google, go to Drive, and start a presentation. But what if you have several slide shows to present and toggle between?

Here is a solution using this platform, SBYou (you.stonybrook.edu) to access your Google Presentations. The goal is to use SB You as a table of contents of links to your slides BUT the slides must open in presentation mode.

Here is an example of a page or blog post on SBYOU that links to presentation-ready slides and allows you to toggle between them:

Clever and Productive Uses for Google Apps!

Create Meetings that Everyone Can Attend (slides)
Exploring Chrome Apps and Extensions (slides)
- My favorite extension Ginger (points to a specific slide in the above presentation)
Are you Drowning in Email – Inbox Zero, a time management concept (slides)

How to recreate the example.

1. It is a good idea to house all of your slides into one Google Drive folder. Also, convert your PowerPoint sides if necessary to Google slides

2. Share each Google Slide show so that when you click on a link to it, you won’t have to stop and sign in while you are presenting your information to a live audience.

Share your Google Slides with “Anyone with the link” by right clicking on it in Drive > Share > Share (again) > Advanced > Change “Private – Only you can access” to “Anyone who has the link can view” > Done
Anyone with the link can view

3. Create your page or blog post in SBYou. Create a list or table of content that will link to your presentations.

4. You need a special URL from Google Slides so that each presentation opens in presentation mode–not in Edit mode.

To get this special link, open one of your presentations, click the down pointing arrow ▼ next to Present > Present in new window

Copy the URL in the new window:

To post it to your SBYou page, select text on your SBYou page and click the Insert/Edit link button:

Paste your special URL in the URL field and check off “Open Link in a new window.” Then click Add link:

And prior to your presentation test test test the links. You can always contact me to help you test and fine tune your SBYou site.

*Make sure you are completely signed out of SBYou and Google and try to access the site and links.