Add-ons can provide a lot of additional functionality to Google Forms, Sheets, Slides, and Docs. In some cases using the right Add-on can save you a lot of time on completing routine tasks. Other times they make Forms, Sheets, Slides, and Docs do things that they could not otherwise do for you. Here are five Add-ons that I’m going to be utilizing more often in 2018.
Certify’em
Certify’em makes it possible to not only give students their grades right away, it also issues them a certificate for passing a quiz created in Google Forms. To use Certify’em properly you should install it and enable it before creating your quiz in Google Forms. When you enable Certify’em on a Form it will populate a couple of required fields in your Form and ask you to specify a minimum passing score. Complete those fields then write your quiz and set an answer key just as you would for any other quiz that you build in Google Forms. When students complete the quiz they will automatically receive PDF certificate in their email inboxes if they have passed the quiz.
Certify’em was developed by the same person who developed the extremely popular Flubaroo Add-on for Google Sheets.
Unsplash
The selection of Google Slides Add-ons is fairly limited at this point, but there are some good ones for teachers and students within that small collection. One of those is the Unsplash Photos Add-on. This Add-on gives you instant access to Unsplash’s collection of free, royalty-free photographs. In the following video I demonstrate how to add the Add-on to your Google Slides, how to use Unsplash Photos, and I explain the licensing of Unsplash Photos.
Audio Player for Google Slides
Audio Player for Google Slides is a free Add-on that will enable you to play music in the background of your Google Slides presentation. It will work with any audio file that you have stored in your Google Drive account. To use Audio Player for Google Slides simply activate the Add-on then choose that audio file that you want to have played in the background of your presentation. You can specify an start and end time for your file. It is also possible to have your audio file loop continuously throughout your presentation.
Form Recycler
formRecycler is a free Google Forms Add-on that makes it easy to reuse questions from one Google Form into another form. When you have the formRecycler Add-on installed you can access all of your existing Google Forms and then pick questions from one of those existing Forms to use in a new form. You can use formRecycler multiple times on the same form and thereby include questions from multiple existing forms in your new form.
Photo Slideshow
Photo Slideshow is a free Add-on that makes it quick and easy to import an entire Google Photos or Google Drive folder into Google Slides. Once you have installed the Add-on just select either Google Photos or Google Drive and then choose the folder of images that you want to have displayed in a slideshow. Each image in the folder will automatically be placed on a slide.
Learn more about Add-ons for G Suite products in my on-demand course, G Suite for Teachers.
