Useful Google Docs Updates

Over the last ten days Google has released a few updates that should be of interest to educators who use Google Docs. First, last week Google announced new options for searching and sorting your documents. In the past the only way to sort your documents was chronologically according to the time of the last edit. Even if you put your documents into folders still the only way to sort was chronologically. Now you can sort your document search by relevance or time stamp.

The second enhancement to Google Docs announced last week is a new option for exporting all of the contents of your Google Docs. You can now export all of your documents (up to 2GB, roughly 100,000 pages) at once.

Finally, on Monday of this week Google announced a new co-editor option for Google Docs Presentations. The co-editor service allows users to simultaneously edit a presentation without stepping on each other's toes. When you use the co-editor for presentations you can see which slide(s) your co-editor is working on.

Applications for Education
The new "export all" option could be useful for students and teachers who would like to create offline copies of their documents with just a click. The new co-editor for presentations could be useful for students who are developing group presentations. Students can collaborate without the frustration of trying to work on a slide that someone else is trying to edit at the same time.