Your Copy is a Template . . .and Can You Please Keep Awake!

This week's post brings a blast from the past and a clever solution for the present. I'm talking about our old friend, and creativity assistant, the template and a new friend who can help us keep the Chromebooks from logging out every time you or a student leaves the computer for five minutes. Let's explore the new Google Apps Template Galleries for Docs, Sheets, and Slides and meet our newest frustration saver, Keep Awake.


Remember the old days of Office, where there was a very cool template gallery that opened every time you began a new document or presentation? You could find templates for resumes, brochures, and newsletters. Then, you switched to Google Apps and, while there was a template gallery (that not a lot of people knew about), it wasn't the same. Now, with the separation of church and GAFE (#seewhatIdidthere), the tools in your Google Drive have almost all been separated into their own apps. This makes them work more smoothly on mobile devices and on the web. Now, they will operate from Drive or independently from their own, task-specific apps. Watch the short video to learn how to access the new template galleries (If you want to view the video in a larger format, hover over the video and click on the YouTube or directly on the "Full Screen" option to watch a larger version of the video).

The next piece of awesome was a result of a student assistant from La Mesa Blended Community School who asked me a few weeks ago if there was a way he could keep the chromebooks from sleeping while he was trying to help his teacher Dionne distribute chromebooks. Then, the very next day, there was a TIP exhibition at Reflections Central where Alicia, Cindy, and Knikki's students wanted to present their recorded podcasts to an audience of teachers, administrators, probation staff, and community members using the chromebooks (the podcasts were amazing, you should check them out: Reflections on Courage). They also needed a way to keep the chromebooks from sleeping so each group could just share a computer with a visitor instead of having to log in each time it went to sleep. Noticing a clear need for our community,  I researched a tool that could keep the chromebooks awake. With the ease of the Google Apps Admin Panel, I deployed the Keep Awake extension to everyone in our organization. You should now see a picture of the moon in your extension bar (See image above). If you want to keep the chromebook awake, click the moon and it will turn into the sun, which will keep the screen on. If you click again, you will get a sunset, which keeps the computer from sleeping (unless you close the lid). Don't worry, the extension will reset after the student, or teacher, logs out of the chromebook. If for some reason you don't have the extension, you can go to the Chrome Web Store and add it to your browser manually. I hope this will help some of you save time in the classroom. Please let me know if you have any questions or thoughts in the comment section below!

Be Awesome,

jeff