Your @ecolint.ch, @learning.ecolint.ch or @pgce.ecolint.ch account is a 'G Suite for Education' account. Depending on whether you are a staff member, a PGCE student or an Ecolint student dictates how much time you have to get any content out of your account before it is deactivated and then deleted.

My advice is to decide upon what you want to keep and complete the necessary processes as soon as possible. The ability to move digital assets from one platform to another is a key skill.

Your Windows account

Following departure, your Windows account will be shut down at the end of June. We need to do this for security reasons. You should therefore make certain you have taken all your locally-stored files on the school servers with you at the latest your their final day at the school. We cannot be responsible for keeping these files nor access to them after the beginning of July.

Usually the easiest way to move files off the network is to copy them over to a USB drive.

Mail - start here

Firstly ensure you have set up another email account. This following series of processes is only really fully possible if you have a personal @gmail.com account. If you are creating a new @gmail.com account now is the time to think about your new email address as it may be with you for a while. sparklyunicorn2018@gmail.com may not be the best address to share with future academic institutions and employers!

Set up an 'Out of Office' reply for your school email account. Use the message to explain that this email address will soon cease to function and what your new email address is.

Set up email forwarding from your school email account to your new email address. Ensure you make the effort to update the sender of each email you receive with your new email address.

Mail - Contacts

To export your email contacts do the following:

1. Go to contacts.google.com and ensure you are signed in with your school account.
2. In the left hand column click on ‘More’.
3. Choose 'Export...'
4. Decide which contacts and the necessary export format.
5. You will then need to import your contacts into your new mail account using a very similar process if you have chosen to use a @gmail.com account.

Mail - your emails

Firstly do you need all your old emails? Can you just find and print (as PDFs) the ones you need?

If you are over 18 years old you can use Google Takeout to download a 'MBOX' file of all your email - you would then need to use a third-party programme to get these messages back into a @gmail.com account.

If you want to get all your school mail messages try the process described here - remember you have a 'Google Apps address'.

Google Drive Documents

This is tricky because of file ownership settings for Google Documents, Google Slides and Google Sheets files. You can share the files with another @gmail.com account but when your school account is deactivated you will lose access to the files. Therefore there is a need to change the ownership of files and/or get the files in a format without ownership.

Easiest... but downloads the files as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, image or PDF files. This service is only available for staff, PGCE students and Year 13 students due to age restrictions. If you are in Year 7 to Year 12 you will have to use the 'Trickier and more time consuming' approach below.

Use Google Takeout to download all the Google Documents, Drawings, Forms, Presentations and Sheets that your are the owner of. You can decide upon which file type each of these types of file is downloaded as.

Trickier and more time consuming... but gets the files into Google Drive. Create a folder in your school Google Drive and place all of the files in this folder that you want to transfer. Share this folder with your personal Google account. Once shared, open the folder in your personal Google account, highlight all the contents of the folder (Ctrl or Cmd + A should do the trick), then right click over the highlighted files and 'Make a copy' of all of the contents. You will need to do some 'tidying' of these copies to recreate your folder structures etc. These copies are owned by your personal Google account. Access to the files that were shared from your school Google account will be lost as your school account is archived and deleted.

Google Sites

To begin, open the Google Site from within your school account.

• Go to More Actions (the cog/gear shaped icon) > Manage Site.
• Select the 'Sharing and Permissions' option in the left-hand navigation panel.
• Share your site with the email address of your personal Google account making sure you select “Is the Owner” in the drop-down box.
• This will send an email to the account you entered (as long as you ticked the 'Notify people' box) which will include a link to the sites current location within the school domain.

Steps to take place in the personal Google account:

• Open your personal Google account and Gmail to view the email and therefore link to the site you just shared.
• Click the link to the shared site and ensure you login with your personal Google account when/if prompted to.
• Once you are logged in, open the site and click the More Actions > Manage Site options.
• Select the General option in the left side navigation panel.
• Click 'Copy this Site'.
• Type in the (new) site name and take note of the new URL which should read: http://sites.google.com/site/(new site name here)
• Click the button to 'Copy Site'.
• To remove your school account as an owner of the site go to More Actions > Sharing and remove the school account as an owner of the site.

Any files that have been inserted into the Google Site that are saved in Google Drive will still be located in your school Google account after ownership of the site has been transferred.  Individual items in the Google Site will need to have their new location (if you have transferred ownership or copied them to your personal Google account) updated.

If you have difficulties with the processes described - please use the comment box below.

Your @ecolint.ch, @learning.ecolint.ch or @pgce.ecolint.ch account is a 'G Suite for Education' account. Depending on whether you are a staff member, a PGCE student or an Ecolint student dictates how much time you have to get any content out of your account before it is deactivated and then deleted. My advice is to decide upon what you want to keep and complete the necessary processes as soon as possible. The ability to move digital assets from one platform to another is a key skill.

Mail - start here

Firstly ensure you have set up another email account. This following series of processes is only really fully possible if you have a personal @gmail.com account. If you are creating a new @gmail.com account now is the time to think about your new email address as it may be with you for a while. sparklyunicorn2018@gmail.com may not be the best address to share with future academic institutions and employers!

Set up an 'Out of Office' reply for your school email account. Use the message to explain that this email address will soon cease to function and what your new email address is.

Set up email forwarding from your school email account to your new email address. Ensure you make the effort to update the sender of each email you receive with your new email address.

Mail - Contacts

To export your email contacts do the following:

1. Go to contacts.google.com and ensure you are signed in with your school account.
2. In the left hand column click on ‘More’.
3. Choose 'Export...'
4. Decide which contacts and the necessary export format.
5. You will then need to import your contacts into your new mail account using a very similar process if you have chosen to use a @gmail.com account.

Mail - your emails

Firstly do you need all your old emails? Can you just find and print (as PDFs) the ones you need?

If you are over 18 years old you can use Google Takeout to download a 'MBOX' file of all your email - you would then need to use a third-party programme to get these messages back into a @gmail.com account.

If you want to get all your school mail messages try the process described here - remember you have a 'Google Apps address'.

Google Drive Documents

This is tricky because of file ownership settings for Google Documents, Google Slides and Google Sheets files. You can share the files with another @gmail.com account but when your school account is deactivated you will lose access to the files. Therefore there is a need to change the ownership of files and/or get the files in a format without ownership.

Easiest... but downloads the files as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, image or PDF files. This service is only available for staff, PGCE students and Year 13 students due to age restrictions. If you are in Year 7 to Year 12 you will have to use the 'Trickier and more time consuming' approach below.

Use Google Takeout to download all the Google Documents, Drawings, Forms, Presentations and Sheets that your are the owner of. You can decide upon which file type each of these types of file is downloaded as.

Trickier and more time consuming... but gets the files into Google Drive. Create a folder in your school Google Drive and place all of the files in this folder that you want to transfer. Share this folder with your personal Google account. Once shared, open the folder in your personal Google account, highlight all the contents of the folder (Ctrl or Cmd + A should do the trick), then right click over the highlighted files and 'Make a copy' of all of the contents. You will need to do some 'tidying' of these copies to recreate your folder structures etc. These copies are owned by your personal Google account. Access to the files that were shared from your school Google account will be lost as your school account is archived and deleted.

Google Sites

To begin, open the Google Site from within your school account.

• Go to More Actions (the cog/gear shaped icon) > Manage Site.
• Select the 'Sharing and Permissions' option in the left-hand navigation panel.
• Share your site with the email address of your personal Google account making sure you select “Is the Owner” in the drop-down box.
• This will send an email to the account you entered (as long as you ticked the 'Notify people' box) which will include a link to the sites current location within the school domain.

Steps to take place in the personal Google account:

• Open your personal Google account and Gmail to view the email and therefore link to the site you just shared.
• Click the link to the shared site and ensure you login with your personal Google account when/if prompted to.
• Once you are logged in, open the site and click the More Actions > Manage Site options.
• Select the General option in the left side navigation panel.
• Click 'Copy this Site'.
• Type in the (new) site name and take note of the new URL which should read: http://sites.google.com/site/(new site name here)
• Click the button to 'Copy Site'.
• To remove your school account as an owner of the site go to More Actions > Sharing and remove the school account as an owner of the site.

Any files that have been inserted into the Google Site that are saved in Google Drive will still be located in your school Google account after ownership of the site has been transferred.  Individual items in the Google Site will need to have their new location (if you have transferred ownership or copied them to your personal Google account) updated.

If you have difficulties with the processes described - please use the comment box below.

Quizzes in Google Forms

With Quizzes, it is possible to select correct answers for multiple choice and checkbox questions to speed up the process of feedback. You can enter explanations and review materials to help students learn.

source: Google

You can then specify point values for each multiple choice question. In that same menu you can enter answer explanations. The quizzes setting also gives you the option of letting students see their scores immediately after completing a quiz.

These updates are welcome but for ‘quiz power users’ sticking with Socrative or Kahoot will offer you more options. For those who want to take their use of Google Forms further try the feature-laden Google Sheets Add-on called Flubaroo.

Support from Google on making quizzes, assigning points etc can be found here.

Add images to questions and answers in Google Forms

Add images to questions and answers in Google Forms

You can now craft even more effective forms by inserting images into survey questions or adding images as multiple choice or checkbox options in Google Forms on the web.
You can also add an image to a question.

The ability to add videos into Google Forms has existed for a while.

Google Slides is a presentation application. It is Google’s version of Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote. It comes with all the online collaboration features that you would expect from G Suite for Education application. All staff and students have G Suite for Education accounts and therefore access to Google Slides.

Google is constantly updating its applications - refining and adding features. The following features have been added to Google Slides in the last 6 months.

Allowing participants to submit questions and vote on them during a Google Slides presentation

To see the feature in action, check out this video:

A few things to note:

• The Slides Q&A feature works on all devices that can open a browser - so in the context of Campus des Nations laptops or smartphones would work.
• You can only use Slides Q&A if you have edit or comment access to that Slides presentation.

‘Accept and present audience questions’ support available here.

Use your mouse as a laser pointer in Slides

Just choose the laser pointer option from the toolbar and move your mouse, and a red laser-like dot will appear in the same place on screen.

Managing group work - Assigning an Action Item

You can manually assign an Action Item to someone in the Docs, Sheets and Slides desktop and mobile apps by mentioning their name in a comment and checking the new Action Item box. The assignee will get an email notification and see the Action Item(s) clearly highlighted with a blue bar when they open the file.

The assignee is responsible for marking the action as being completed. This is useful for giving feedback to students and working with a team of colleagues upon a project.

‘Assign an Action Item’ support here.

Using the ‘Explore’ feature to make design polishing simple

As you (or students) work, ‘Explore’ dynamically generates design suggestions, based on the content of your slide. Simply pick a recommendation and apply it with a single click - no cropping, resizing or reformatting required. This should speed up the process of design and allow you (and students) to spend more time focusing on the content of the presentation.

At the bottom right, click Explore.

You might see images or information you can use to help finish your work.

• Layouts: To choose a new layout for your slide, click the one you want.
• Web search: Search the web for information related to your presentation.
• Images: To preview an image, click Preview Zoom in. To use an image, click it. This will also add the link to the bottom of the image.
• Google Drive: You can search Google Drive for content to use with your presentation.

‘See and use suggested layouts in a presentation’ support here.

Inserting charts from Google Sheets into Slides

To save valuable time, G Suite is now making it possible to update a chart in a Google Slide with a single click - without ever needing to leave your document or presentation.

To get started, simply go to Insert > Chart in Google Docs or Slides on the web. Insert a new chart, or select From Sheets to add an existing chart from the spreadsheet of your choice. As long as you check the Link to spreadsheet box, you’ll be given the option to update the chart with one click if its underlying data in Google Sheets changes. Should you no longer want to be notified of updates to a particular chart, you can simply unlink it. This same functionality is available if you copy and paste a chart into a document or presentation.

[The 2018 version of this post can be found here]

[ Updated - Monday 19th June 2017 ]

Your @ecolint.ch, @learning.ecolint.ch or @pgce.ecolint.ch account is a 'Google Apps for Education' (GAFE) account. Depending on whether you are a staff member, a PGCE student or an Ecolint student dictates how much time you have to get any content out of your GAFE account before it is deactivated and then deleted. My advice is to decide upon what you want to keep and complete the necessary processes as soon as possible.

Mail - start here

Firstly ensure you have set up another email account. This following series of processes is only really fully possible if you have a personal @gmail.com account. If you are creating a new @gmail.com account now is the time to think about your new email address as it may be with you for a while. sparklyunicorn2016@gmail.com may not be the best address to share with future academic institutions and employers!

Set up an 'Out of Office' reply for your school email account. Use the message to explain that this email address will soon cease to function and what your new email address is.

Set up email forwarding from your school email account to your new email address. Ensure you make the effort to update the sender of each email you receive with your new email address.

Mail - Contacts

To export your email contacts do the following:

1. Go the the Contacts screen in your school email account (there is a small triangle near to where it says 'Mail' in the top left hand corner of the screen').
2. Click on 'More'
3. Choose 'Export...'
4. Decide which contacts and the necessary export format.
5. You will then need to import your contacts into your new mail account using a very similar process if you have chosen to use a @gmail.com account.

Mail - your emails

Firstly do you need all your old emails? Can you just find and print (as PDFs) the ones you need? If you want to get all your school mail messages try Gmail's Mail Fetcher feature - details can be found here - remember you have a 'Google Apps address'. Alternatively you can use Google Takeout (if you are over 18 years old) to download a 'MBOX' file of all your email - you would then need to use a third-party programme to get these messages back into a @gmail.com account.

Google Drive Documents

Easiest... but downloads the files as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, image or PDF files. This service is only available for staff, PGCE students and Year 13 students due to age restrictions. If you are in Year 7 to Year 12 you will have to use the 'Trickier and more time consuming' approach below.

Use Google Takeout to download all the Google Documents, Drawings, Forms, Presentations and Sheets that your are the owner of. You can decide upon which file type each of these types of file is downloaded as.

Trickier and more time consuming... but gets the files into Google Drive. Create a folder in your school Google Drive and place all of the files in this folder that you want to transfer. Share this folder with your personal Google account. Once shared, open the folder in your personal Google account, highlight all the contents of the folder (Ctrl or Cmd + A should do the trick), then right click over the highlighted files and 'Make a copy' of all of the contents. You will need to do some 'tidying' of these copies to recreate your folder structures etc. These copies are owned by your personal Google account. Access to the files that were shared from your school Google account will be lost as your school account is archived and deleted.

Google Sites

To begin, open the Google Site from within your school account.

• Go to More Actions (the cog/gear shaped icon) > Manage Site.
• Select the 'Sharing and Permissions' option in the left-hand navigation panel.
• Share your site with the email address of your personal Google account making sure you select “Is the Owner” in the drop-down box.
• This will send an email to the account you entered (as long as you ticked the 'Notify people' box) which will include a link to the sites current location within the school domain.

Steps to take place in the personal Google account:

• Open your personal Google account and Gmail to view the email and therefore link to the site you just shared.
• Click the link to the shared site and ensure you login with your personal Google account when/if prompted to.
• Once you are logged in, open the site and click the More Actions > Manage Site options.
• Select the General option in the left side navigation panel.
• Click 'Copy this Site'.
• Type in the (new) site name and take note of the new URL which should read: http://sites.google.com/site/(new site name here)
• Click the button to 'Copy Site'.
• To remove your school account as an owner of the site go to More Actions > Sharing and remove the school account as an owner of the site.

Any files that have been inserted into the Google Site that are saved in Google Drive will still be located in your school Google account after ownership of the site has been transferred.  Individual items in the Google Site will need to have their new location (if you have transferred ownership or copied them to your personal Google account) updated.

If you have difficulties with the processes described - please use the comment box below.

[Thank you to Jenny Fenton for outlining some of the processes.]

Google has a cloud photo management system - Google Photos - which some consider to be the current best solution available.

This week Google has added the ability to create 'shared albums' - where multiple people can contribute images into a single collaborative album.

This could be rather useful! Imagine a team of teachers or students using a single album to curate photos from a trip or experience. It works online and via the Android and iOS Google Photos apps. As as a 'Google Apps for Education' user you have unlimited storage.

Google Photos can be found by clicking on the 'waffle' in the top right hand corner of any of the Google apps. Once you have started to create an album you can then choose the sharing options and choose how the album is shared and who can contribute to it.

In Google Drive it is possible to 'add selected items to an additional folder'. This means that you can have a file in more than one folder. You are not duplicating the file - you are just putting access to it in more than one place.

The process:

1. Select the file you would like to have in more than one folder.
2. Move the file to one of the folders you want to keep it in. Do this by 'right-clicking' on the file and then choosing 'Move to'. You then need to choose the desired folder.

1. Then click the folder to which you would like to add the file. You are not copying the file. You are just adding access to the file to an additional folder.
2. Done.

Other keyboard shortcuts for Google Drive on the web can be found here.

You have produced a Google Document, Sheet or Slide and you want the students to make a copy of it so that they work upon their own copy.

You can share the document with the students - with the students only having the right to view the document and then ask them to go to File and then Make a Copy. However this is a multi-step process for the students.

An easier way is to share an edited link with the students that forces them to create a copy.

Firstly get the sharing link for the document - as you are sharing from one domain (@ecolint.ch) to another (@learning.ecolint.ch) setting it to 'Anybody who has the link can view' is the easiest approach.

You need to remove everything after the final / and replace it with copy

- for example:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13aPUn-TLSdnaBp7UYyo5jlwGu8MDauD-ta9pWGkKD6c

/copy

You can share this with the students via email, ManageBac or your website.

If the student clicks on the new link and is not logged into their Google Apps for Education account it will ask them to do so.