Explore in Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets

Explore is an under-used feature within Google Suite that is great for students to use when they are writing a paper, doing research, or working on a project in Google Docs, Slides, or Sheets. 

The Explore feature:
  • Pulls topics from your writing
  • Uses those topics to curate suggestions of websites, images, and other files from your Google Drive
  • Cites as a footnote any source that you use 
To use the Explore feature, first open up a Google Doc or Slides that has text.  Open Explore by clicking the icon in the lower right corner of the window or by choosing Tools- Explore.

Select which topic you'd like for Explore to...explore.  If you don't like what it pulls automatically based on your writing, you can type a different keyword.
Explore will pull websites, images, and anything in your personal Google Drive that relates to your topic/keyword.


To cite the source you've selected, choose the three dots and choose your citation format.
Then, select the quotation marks to cite that source as a footnote within your work. 
Watch this tutorial starting at three minutes to see this in action, or watch the whole ten minutes for some other helpful hints about Google that might be new to you!









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