Images in Google Docs

As an educator you want your students to add images to their writing for a variety of reasons. Whether to add visual support to the writing, add context, or just to break up a text heavy page. But that usually means asking your students to do an image search which can be a scary proposition even with safesearch on or leads to a lesson on digital citizenship and copyright. Or, perhaps, the worst case scenario - clip art!

Google Apps for Ed to the Rescue!

If you are a Google Apps for Education school and have your students using Google Docs there is a solution baked into Google Docs to help teachers and students find engaging and copyright friendly images. From the insert menu choose image -





At the bottom of the option window that opens you can select search which brings up this -




From here students can search Google Images, the Life magazine archives, or Google stock images.

So...What’s that mean?

If nothing else this makes a Google image search that much easier for students since they can complete their search inside the document rather than opening a web browser. But more importantly they can choose high quality and interesting images from the Life archives with permission to use those images. The last option is to browse the stock images gallery. This gallery of images is licensed for use by anyone. By choosing this option you are introducing your students to proper digital citizenship by using copyright friendly media.

All right, but what does it look like?

No problem! Watch the quick video below to see this in action!



For more in depth tips, tricks, and to learn more about what Google Apps for Education has to offer, be sure to come to the California Google Apps Summit July 12th and 13th in Santa Clara California. More information and registration here.