Tag: Gmail

Time Saving Gmail Features

Photo by Kon Karampelas on Unsplash

What: I love using GSuite products but the one I use most often is Gmail. The following features are my favorite for saving time and making my day run as efficiently as possible. You can watch a step-by-step tutorial by Richard Byrne for most of these features by clicking here. 

  1. Schedule Send: I love this feature. I am an avid planner and send emails to students every Monday with notes for the work due during the upcoming week. However, I do not always have time to compose a message every Monday morning. Schedule send allows me to compose a message and schedule it to send it at a later time by simply composing my message (adding attachments, text, and recipients) and clicking the arrow next to the send button. I then choose a specific date and time to schedule my message to send. 
  2. Confidential mode: I often want to send messages to people but do not want them to forward the content or be able to print it (think confidential information like student IEPs, behavior plans, etc). Once a message is composed, click on the icon along the bottom of the message that looks like a lock with a clock in order to enable confidential mode. You will then be able to set the message to expire at a certain time and will not allow the recipient to forward, print, or download the message.  
  3. Canned responses: I often get the same message from students over and over again. Canned responses allow me to save time by not having to write the exact same response over and over. Simply click on settings, advanced, and choose to enable canned responses. Then compose a message, click the three dots in the lower right corner, choose canned responses, and save the draft as a template. Every time you receive an email you can open canned responses by clicking on the three dots in the lower right corner and choosing the desired draft as a response. 
  4. Smart Compose: I love the smart compose setting. If this feature is enabled, Google will auto-complete sentences for you as you type eliminating the need to fully type out every word. Simply open settings and ensure Smart Compose and Smart Compose Personalization are both set to on. 
  5. Preview Pane: I utilize the preview pane mode so that my email is split into three columns, labels on the far left, inbox in the middle, and individual emails open on the right column. This feature allows me to easily navigate between emails because they open instantly on the right. You can enable this feature by opening settings, choosing advanced, and ensuring preview pane is on. 
  6. Conversation Mode: I use conversation mode to keep my inbox organized. When conversation mode is turned on, email responses from the same email are grouped together. When conversation mode is off email responses appear as their own email. Meaning a group email with ten responses will be ten different emails in your inbox instead of combined into one group. To enable conversation mode, click on settings and ensure conversation mode is set to on. 

References:

All sourced information is hyperlinked as applicable above. 

TLDR (too long didn’t read):

I love using GSuite products but the one I use most often is Gmail. The following features are my favorite for saving time and making my day run as efficiently as possible. You can watch a step-by-step tutorial by Richard Byrne of most of these features by clicking here. 

@hollandkaylah

Pokémon Go Automatically Granting Permission to Read Your Gmail

Pokemon Go

The Verge is reporting that “Pokémon Go has become wildly popular in the days since its release last week, but the app may be hiding a serious security issue. In many cases, users who sign into the app through a Google Account are often inadvertently granting broad permissions over all information linked to the account, including the power to read and send emails. At no point in the sign-in process does the app notify users that full access is being granted” (Source). Read more at The Verge.

Perhaps the app developer will correct this issue in the near future.

Email Problems Impacting Responses

I’m currently dealing with technical issues related to my email. Recently two of the office administrators indicated that they hadn’t received information that I’d emailed them. Soon after, I realized that three of my students were not receiving my email replies. I began to investigate with the help of tech support. We tried several troubleshooting measures which I hoped corrected the issues. Then I recently received hundreds of failed email delivery notifications. These failed outgoing messages date back to early May and only just now arrived in my Inbox. I’ve not received a plausible explanation for any of this, but it does seem that my email Outbox is working again. I offer my sincere apologies to those that probably think I’ve been ignoring them. I’ll happily correct this if you’ll bring it to my attention.

Email Failure

Google Apps for Education Southern Summit

I’m excited about being a part of this. I hope you can join us!

We invite you to join us for the first annual Google Apps for Education Southern Summit in Atlanta, Georgia on September 22 and 23, 2012. This high intensity two day event focuses on deploying, integrating and using Google Apps for Education to promote student learning in K-12 and higher education. The program features Google Certified Teachers, Google Apps for Education Certified Trainers, practicing administrators, solution providers, Google engineers, and representatives from the Google Apps for Education team.

Sessions include two keynote presentations, plus two full days of informative breakouts, cutting-edge demonstrations, and hands-on workshops led by experienced and knowledgeable professional developers.

  • Deployment & Management of Google Apps
  • Google Apps Scripts
  • Google Apps for Education Certification
  • Chromebooks in Education
  • YouTube for Schools
  • Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, Gmail power tips, and… even more!

The Google Apps for Education Southern Summit will be in Atlanta, near the area’s most popular attractions.

Register now to take advantage of the early bird rates.

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Class Activity: Take a Virtual Trip through Google’s Servers

Here’s a quick activity that you can do in your classroom to explore the topic of sustainable energy. It comes to us from Google.

Introduction

Ever wondered what happens when you send an email? How does an email travel from your computer to your friend’s smartphone across the country or around the world?

Take a journey with Gmail and find out. In this short video you will follow an email on its journey to see what happens once you send a message. Along the way, you will learn about some of Google’s efforts to minimize its impact on the environment.

 

Exploration

Take a journey through Google’s data centers by following an email along its path. Along the way, explore Google’s data centers with videos, photos and more. It all begins when you click send. Click on the image below to begin the online module.


Google Green

Google claims it is creating a better web that’s better for the environment. Google states, “We’re greening our company by using resources efficiently and supporting renewable power. That means when you use Google products, you’re being better to the environment…At Google, we’ve worked hard to minimize the environmental impact of our services. In fact, to provide you with Google products for a month, our servers use less energy per user than leaving a light on for 3 hours. If you add in our renewable energy and offsets, our footprint is zero. And we continue to find new ways to reduce our impact even further.”

Learn more about about Google Green here.

Educational Connections

Science – environment, sustainable energy, renewable energy, green

Geography – locate the nearest Google data center using Google Maps

Math – calculations regarding distance, time, rate

Language arts – write a sample email, follow the writing process to edit and re-write your email

 

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