Falling for Google Cloud Print

Before my kids came along I was alway a little embarrassed for those midlife picture-snappers who clicked away at even the smallest of achievements. Don't get me wrong, I get, "The First Steps," but the need to post a video of a child's first drool was beyond me, well, at least until the first of my three kids was born - now I get it! Even the smallest of feats that each of my children performs is worth capturing, editing into some make shift montage and sending along to the relative who could never possibly appreciate the magic of the moment that was captured.

This week, while enjoying the newness of my continuously updated Chrome browser on a brand new addition to my family - the MacBook Air - I watched Chrome do something I had never seen her do, it was so exciting that I had to capture the moment and share it with the world:

This week I watched for the first time, my old clunky desktop printer, jump to life as if taking its first steps to print a document transmitted wirelessly through the internet from my MacBook air, and all because, this week I found Google Cloud Print.

It made me so giddy to realize that I could print to my nearly retired inkjet printer from my factory fresh iPhone, my iPad or any wireless laptop computer from across the room, across town or around the world, that, well, I had to make a video montage demonstrating the magic.

- Happy Printing.

Follow this link for Step by Step instructions to start printing wirelessly using Google Cloud Print.

4 New Google Forms Features

Google is kind of like your out of state Grandma. You could always count on grandma for the big ticket items at birthday and Christmas: play your cards right with a thank you card decorated with a little creative crayoning and you could be looking at a new bike come the Holidays. Google is a giver too: We have all these incredible Apps for Free and when you want to know something, it is not unusual to receive a quarter million possible responses to a well crafted question in under a second. 

Big Tickets! 

But, Google and Grandma aren't just about the two times a year gifts. When G-ma swings through for a visit, she'll always let a crisp one dollar bill fall from her coin purse in the vicinity of any well behaved grandkid right when mom steps out of the room. In the same fashion, just when you weren't expecting it, Google swings through with an unplanned update and drops a couple freshly minted features right into your browser.

This week Google released four new features for the Google Forms App. Super slick! 

1. You can now embed YouTube Videos in a Google Form! Wait, what?! Read it again and think of the possibilities! Have students watch a short video clip, then have them answer a couple multi-choice, checkbox, short text, paragraph text & scaled answers that all populate to your online spreadsheet!? This is going to be awesome!

It is super simple: just click insert Video... 

                 

                     

    And boom!

2. What is Text Validation? If you have ever asked people to type their email address into a Google Form along with the promise that you would send them some great info just as soon as the Form was submitted, then you have lived the embarrassment of explaining that the info was never delivered because the user quick-fingered a typo, while keying in their address. 

Text Validation will check to ensure that the email is at least configured correctly and notify the user if they have made an error before moving on. 

Below the short text response question, just click the Text Validation Drop Down icon and select the type of validation you require.






3. This next one seems simple enough, but I am over the moon excited: The Progress Bar! 
Ok, no secret, I am a "little" long winded, and so my forms can get a bit creative...add in a few page breaks, and now a couple embedded videos, and people could start to worry, "Is this form ever going to end?" Today we have: The Progress Bar! Every form filler-outer will now know how much more they have to fill out before reaching the sweet sight of the Submit button.

Just check the box that says - "Show Progress Bar at the Bottom of form Pages,"

                      

And you are making progress!

4. Finally, your users will be able to see a custom message when the form is no longer "Accepting Responses." For educators, this will be a great way to open and close quizzes and online assessments. When the form is closed or no longer accepting responses, you can craft a message that let's your users know why it is closed and when it may be open again.










I was just so excited to get an unexpected update to one of my favorite Google Apps, I just thought I should climb up to the rooftop and spread the good news. Happy Googling.  

Creating a Google Form that Automatically Eliminates a Selection once it has been Selected

Ok, the title is not all that spicy, but the learning is legit! I am so excited about this Google Form Hack, I have used it a couple of cool ways and I think you will too. Quick story:

When I was at the Google Teacher Academy in Chicago this summer I watched a demo by a cat named +Jay Atwood , super nice guy and knows his way around automation. My ears perked up because as a high school principal and a life long slacker, I am always looking for ways to get more done with less effort. Jay mentioned that +Andrew Stillman, the author of like every super-cool Google Script imaginable, had created a particularly useable script named FormRanger. The script will take a list of items that you put in a spreadsheet and make these items the posible selections on a Google Form.

So, if you are new to all this lingo, imagine making an online survey (WebForm), and the answers to each question can change based on how other people answer the questions!?!

For example, you might want to put out a form to your staff asking everyone to choose a day & time to meet with you. Once one person selects a time, FormRanger will update the form and eliminate that selection: Thus no two people will get the same time-slot! 

You could use this for all kinds of things! My wife uses it for a parent volunteer form, you could use it to create a wish list for parent donations and never get the same item twice, or kids could sign up to do book reports or presentations in class! I can imagine it being used for a potluck or any number of things.

So, I set out to try to build a form using FormRanger, super easy, but, no lie, I needed some help with the formulas on the spreadsheet to make it all work. Being the luckiest man alive (married to an amazing wife, I have a super cool job, etc.) I happen to work with +Geoff Lilley , the smartest database-daredevil and excel-super-wizard I have ever met. Thanks to him, I was able to put together this super useful Google Hack. 

Take a look, give it a try, and come back and let me know how you were able to put it into action.

Link to Step By Step Directions