Google Docs Fundamentals

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Google Docs Fundamentals Image Placeholders We just went through something a little complicated so I thought we’d do something fun. Let’s put some pictures into our document. Google Docs provides several ways to place images into a document. We’ll explore each option and talk about what that means for teachers and students. As a teacher I recommend students write out content before they go through the process of inserting any images into the document. Placing images in the document should be the very last thing they do before publishing. If you don’t do this, students will spend more time getting pictures and putting them into place and almost no time creating content. I recommend they write out the content, edit and revise for publishing. Once the content is ready and polished, students can begin looking for pictures and placing them into the document. This does not mean they should not think about where to place images in the document. As they write out the content of the document the location for images will be very easy to figure out. I go through this every time I write this magazine. The content is first and it leads me to the images and where they should go. It’s important to keep this teachable moment in mind. Make your students aware of copyright and citing their sources for media they plan to use in documents. Whenever possible try to use images and media that is in the public domain or part of the creative commons. The first option we have for inserting images into our document is the option to upload an image from the computer. This option requires you to plan ahead a little and gives you the opportunity to prepare the image. Thinking of where images go is a big part of publishing anything that contains images. The placement and size of images is very important. Documents have a finite amount of space. Digital documents we create still conform to their physical counter parts. Documents are typically 8.5 inches wide and 11 inches tall in the United States. This is often a balancing act between the space for content and the space for images. Images have as much to say as content and vise versa. Once the content is created, placing images on the document can be a decision made by students as they work either individually or as a group. I will give you some ideas to help students decide where to place images. Providing a guide to students that is visual and easy to manipulate can be very helpful. It might seem that the easiest thing to do is to click the insert option in the menu and select image. I’m going to recommend you resist that temptation and follow me through a process you might find more useful. As I produce this magazine I use an application called InDesign to layout my content. This application helps me see where I can place images and what they might look like. Before I place an image in the document I set placeholders for the images. These placeholders are rectangular boxes that represent the eventual location of my images. The rectangular boxes represent not only the location but the width and height of the image. We can do the same thing right here inside of Google Docs. This will make students work look more polished and teach them a few more things in the process. This process has an added advantage is that it will give you a little more control over the images you place onto the document. 13 Digital Maestro
Google Docs Fundamentals Image Placeholders In my example I have some lorem ipsum text. Lorem Ipsum text is often used to provide filler text for a document so that those deciding on the layout of a document can have an idea for where text and images will go. The lorem Ipsum text will be replaced by the actual content later. With some text in your document, click on the insert menu option and select drawing. The Drawing tool in Google Docs will help us create place holders for our image and eventually help us prepare the images for placement onto the document. The mouse arrow will change to a cross-hair. Click and drag out a rectangle. The size doesn’t matter. Just don’t make it too big. We now have a rectangle to use as a place holder. Click the save and close button. Click on the shape menu option. The rectangle will be placed in the document where we had our cursor. Images, drawings and media are automatically placed at the location of the cursor. They’re also placed as in-line elements. This means that the document treats the image as just another piece of text. In my example the rectangle pushed the text to the right and is on the same line as the text. Hover over shapes and choose the rectangle. Digital Maestro 14
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