Wednesday, April 14, 2010

You can draw in Google Docs. Woohoo!

Here's how from their website...

About Google drawings

With Google Docs drawings you can easily create, share, and edit drawings online.

Here are a few specific things you can do:

  • Edit drawings online in real time with anyone you choose, and invite others to view your edits in real time.
  • Chat with others who are editing your drawing, from within the drawings editor.
  • Publish drawings online to the world as images, or download them in standard formats.
  • Insert text, shapes, arrows, scribbles, and images from your hard drive or from the Web.
  • Lay out drawings precisely with alignment guides, snap to grid, and auto distribution.
  • Insert drawings into other Google documents, spreadsheets, or presentations using the web clipboard, then tweak them inline.

Creating and Editing Drawings: Using Google drawings with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations

With Google drawings, you can create and collaborate on flow charts, design diagrams, and other types of drawings. You can also chat with other editors from within Google drawings, publish drawings as images, or download drawings to your computer. To get started, just go to your Docs list, click Create new and select Drawings.

Once you’ve created your drawing, and have edited and shared it with others, you might want to insert it (embed it) in a Google document, for example. Use the web clipboard to copy the whole drawing, or any selection within the drawing, and paste it into your doc using the web clipboard. The embedded drawing is a copy of the original, and both can be edited independently after copying. So, if you need to make any minor changes to the drawing, you can edit it from within the document, using the embedded version of Google drawings. Simply click first the drawing and then the Edit link that appears. This version of Google drawings includes a more limited set of features.

Check out my fancy drawing below. Note, having a Tablet makes doing a drawing, dreamy. You can draw without fear. Make a mistake, just undo or erase.


You can use Google drawings to enhance your presentations. You may want to design complete slides within drawings and then use the web clipboard to paste them into your presentation when they’re complete.

Once the drawing has been embedded, you can’t share that version as a separate doc. However, you can use the web clipboard again to copy and paste the embedded version into a new drawing that you can share.

1 comment:

  1. What a wonderful blog this is! My name is Alicia and I am a current student and the University of South Alabama. I am currently enrolled in a EDM310 class which shows future teachers new and innovative ways to engage and teach your students. Our class blog is www.edm310.blogspot.com. I am very intrigued with what a resourceful blog this is. It is a blog that I will continue to follow throughout both my learning and teaching career.

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