For anybody who has ever wished for the flexibility at hand annotate immediately on a Google Doc, Google introduced on Tuesday it’s rolling out a brand new markup characteristic for Google Workspace clients, Google Workspace Particular person subscribers, and private Google accounts that may permit customers to write down immediately on a Google Doc with a stylus or their finger. The brand new characteristic features a few customary pen and highlighter colours (black, blue, purple, inexperienced, yellow), and an eraser. In case you don’t like every of these colours, you possibly can add your personal.
There are such a lot of use instances for a characteristic like this, throughout age teams, industries, {and professional} and private work. Google calls out some good ones in its announcement, particularly for “educators giving students feedback on their essays, reports, short stories.” Anecdotally, I can’t understate how helpful this characteristic could possibly be for artistic writing college students and professors, particularly.
It melds the old-school means of handing out laborious copies of your work with present computing applied sciences and classroom administration platforms that may combine with Google Drive, like Canvas or Blackboard. However you’ll by no means have to fret about lugging an enormous stack of paper to class in your workshop day — or operating out of print credit on the library. (Flash again to undergrad, circa 2006, when my alma mater began charging college students for printing coursework on the library.)
There’s additionally the tactile side of this new characteristic; plenty of us artistic writers choose to handwrite improvement notes on our friends’ work as a result of not solely is it extra private, however as a result of Google Docs’ system for monitoring modifying and feedback can shortly litter the web page. The distinction of typed textual content and handwritten notes on the identical web page could make the knowledge simpler for the author receiving suggestions to parse. Particularly for those who write in a enjoyable coloration. (Shout out to Allison and her child blue gel pens for making constructive criticism enjoyable.)
However there’s a obvious difficulty with the start of its rollout: hand annotation is simply out there on Android units. Home windows, macOS, iOS, ChromeOS, and even Chrome Browser customers on any of these units solely have the choice of viewing paperwork with markups, and exhibiting, hiding, and deleting them. In order that shortens the record of suitable units to Android telephones and tablets. Many Okay-12 college students use non-touchscreen clamshell Chromebooks offered by the varsity for writing and suggestions assignments, and the older the scholar, the extra doubtless they are going to have a Home windows or macOS clamshell laptop computer.
There’s one other difficulty: within the final 10 years, I can rely the variety of instances I’ve seen one in every of my college students or grad college colleagues writing on a pill or 2-in-1 on half a hand. So whereas it looks like Google has created a fantastic characteristic that can be utilized by educators and college students out and in of the classroom, most gained’t have suitable units.
If Google opened up the characteristic to incorporate Home windows, macOS, and iOS units, that would assist alleviate the problem. Apple accounts for nearly 55.9 % of the pill market, in response to an October 2023 report revealed by Statista, and whereas the 2-in-1 laptop computer market is continually rising, some schools encourage their college students to buy convertible Home windows laptops, relying on their main.
Google’s rollout of its new characteristic began February twenty seventh for customers enrolled in Fast Launch. Customers below Google Normal launch will begin seeing the brand new characteristic on March eleventh. Every rollout will take about 15 days.
In case you don’t know your launch monitor, from the Admin console go to Menu > Account > Account settings > Preferences > Launch preferences > New options to examine.