Google's Highlight Tool

Many of you are using Google Docs or DocHub for annotating text, but there is also a tool built right into Google Docs that allows for some pretty great stuff for students and teachers.  This tip comes from Lindsay Stephenson, our district technology coach.

Google Add-ons are like customized extensions specifically for Google.  I've previously blogged about Google Add-ons if you would like to know more.  Some add-ons, like the Highlight Tool, are built in automatically like the Highlight Tool while some you can add yourself.  The purpose of using add-ons is to make your life easier when using Google tools.  There are add-ons for rubrics, inserting math symbols, music notation, and more. 

For this post's purpose, I'm going to be talking about the highlight tool in Google Docs.  If you often have students annotate text, you might try this tool and see what you think.

  1. Copy and paste the text into a blank Google Doc.  This could be an online article, paragraph from the online textbook, etc.
  2. From the menu, choose Add-ons→Highlight Tool→Start
  3. Click on the Highlighter Library to set up your customized highlights/labels. You will choose the label and corresponding color for as many highlights as you choose.  Use the ⍆ button to add a label.  You can export these customized labels to your students as well.  See step #8.-
  4. Once you have your Highlighter Library set up, go back to your document and simply highlight some text and pick the appropriate customized label.
  5. Once the document is annotated, extract the highlights.  Extracting by sequence puts them in the order of the document itself.  Extracting by color lumps all of one color together.  Choose whether you want the extraction to create a new document or be included in the current document.  For Google Classroom purposes, I would choose New document.
  6. The extractions will look something like this.  This is extracted by sequence.
  7. Students could post their extracted annotations to Google Classroom or wherever you want them to turn in assignments.
  8. To export your customized labels to your students, go back to the menu and choose Add-ons→Highlight tool→Export library.
  9. A new document with instructions will be created.  Post those instructions for your students in Google Classroom.
  10. Watch this video for a screencast of the above process:

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