Library and Information Technology Services (LITS)

Would you like to see yourself among the participants of your Google Meet call? Follow the steps below to try it out!

1. Enable Tiled View by clicking the More (3 vertical dots) button from the bottom right  of the window and select Change Layout.

   

2. Select Tiled.
   
3. From the top-right corner of the screen, hover over your Google Account profile icon, and click the grid icon.
   

   You should now see yourself as a tile along with the other participants!

Announced earlier this month from the G Suite Updates blog, two new features have been recently added to the Android and iOS Google Docs app: link previews and smart compose. These features were previously available on the web version of Google Docs, and are now available for mobile.

With link previews, when you click on a link in Docs, information about the content will appear. This can include the title, description, and thumbnail images.

Smart compose can help you write faster and also reduce the chance of spelling and grammatical errors. Smart compose will show suggestions as you type, and you can swipe to the right to accept those suggestions.

For more information, see the original announcement from the G Suite Updates Blog.

What types of tech tips would you like to see more of? We appreciate your feedback! Let us know by contacting us at infodesk@allegheny.edu.

If you’re a faculty member and plan on using Zoom Meetings for your classes this upcoming semester, the Zoom Meetings for Education Training may be helpful to you.

This 45 minute, recorded live training demonstrates best practices and how to schedule, join, and host meetings – and explores the in-meeting tools available to you in Zoom. The training is focused on using Zoom Meetings in a classroom setting.

LITS has also compiled a list of Zoom Tutorials and training resources available to the community.

If you have any questions regarding Zoom Meetings, we encourage you to contact the InfoDesk by email at infodesk@allegheny.edu.

Do you check your calendar first thing at the start of your day? To help save time, you can have your Google Calendar’s daily tasks and events emailed to you!

All it takes to configure this is a settings change in Google Calendar:

1. Open Google Calendar.
2. Go to Settings by clicking the icon in the top-right of the page.
3. From the menu on the left,under Settings for my calendars, click to select the calendar for which you would like to receive the daily agenda.
4. Scroll down to the Other notifications section.
5. Change the setting for Daily Agenda to Email.
   

Polling for Zoom Meetings is a feature which allows you to create either single or multiple choice questions for your attendees, and is available for your Allegheny Zoom account.

To start using polls, you’ll first need to enable the feature for your account by doing the following:

1. Sign into Allegheny’s Zoom web portal at allegheny.zoom.us .
2. From the menu at the left side of the screen, click Settings, then click In Meeting (Basic)
3. Find the setting for Polling, and click the toggle switch to enable polling:
   

Polls can now be added to your Zoom meetings! To create one:

1. From the Zoom web portal (allegheny.zoom.us) go to the Meetings menu. (If you do not have any meetings, you will need to create one first.)
2. The Poll option is located at the bottom of the page, click Add to start creating the poll.
3. Add a title and your first question.
4. Add the answers to your question, and then click Save at the bottom.
5. Click Add a Question if you would like to add additional ones.

(Multiple polls can also be added!)

You will now see Polls in the meeting controls of your Zoom meeting, and you can click Polls to launch the poll.

For more information, see Polling for Meetings in the Zoom Help Center.

Chromebook laptops require little maintenance, overall, but if your Chromebook is starting to slow down – try some of these general tips to boost its performance:

Disable or uninstall unused extensions

Having too many active extensions can consume your Chromebook’s resources and harm its performance. To view the extensions you have installed, open a new tab and type chrome:extensions. Review each extension and consider if you truly need it. (If you’re unsure, you can disable the extension with the blue toggle switch, and re-enable it at a later time.)

Limit the amount of tabs you have open simultaneously

Having too many apps running and too many tabs open in Chrome is another common cause for sluggish performance. If you have open tabs that you would like to re-visit later, consider adding a bookmark.

Install available updates

As is true for other software and operating systems, updates contain new features, security patches, and performance improvements. Your Chromebook should prompt you when it needs to update – but if you’d like to manually check if updates are available: open Settings > About ChromeOS, and click “Check for Updates.”

These are only a few ways to help improve performance, but if you’re experiencing issues with your Chromebook and none of these tips were helpful – we encourage you to reach out to us at infodesk@allegheny.edu, and we’d be glad to help troubleshoot.

Google for Education’s Education OnAir offers a collection of webinars and other digital events focused on using Google tools and applications for educators. Upcoming webinars here are free for registration, and a plethora of prior webinars are available for viewing.

Multiple series of past-recorded webinars are also available,  including:

• Global Distance Learning
• G Suite (in education)
• Google Classroom
• Professional Development
• and more

What types of tech tips would you like to see more of in future posts? We’d love to hear your feedback! Contact us at infodesk@allegheny.edu.

Among other communication methods such as phone and email, rooms in Google Chat can be a valuable tool to help teams collaborate.

Setting up a new room can be accomplished in a few steps:

1. In Google Chat, click Find people, rooms, and bots in the top-left.
2. Click Create Room, then enter a name for your room. Click Create.
3. Now, to add others to the room, click Add people & bots. Enter the desired members’ names or email addresses, select them, and click Send when finished.

Need to add someone to the room later?

1. On the top, click the room name, then click Add people & bots. As before, enter the desired members’ names or email addresses, select them, and click Send when finished.