Google adds hand-annotation markup feature to Docs

Google adds hand-annotation markup feature to Docs

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For anybody who has ever wished for the flexibility handy annotate immediately on a Google Doc, Google announced on Tuesday it’s rolling out a brand new markup function for Google Workspace clients, Google Workspace Particular person subscribers, and private Google accounts that may permit customers to jot down immediately on a Google Doc with a stylus or their finger. The brand new function features a few customary pen and highlighter colours (black, blue, purple, inexperienced, yellow), and an eraser. Should you don’t like several of these colours, you possibly can add your personal.

There are such a lot of use instances for a function like this, throughout age teams, industries, {and professional} and private work. Google calls out some good ones in its announcement, particularly for “educators giving college students suggestions on their essays, stories, brief tales.” Anecdotally, I can’t understate how helpful this function may very well be for inventive writing college students and professors, particularly.

It melds the old-school approach of handing out laborious copies of your work with present computing applied sciences and classroom administration platforms that may combine with Google Drive, like Canvas or Blackboard. However you’ll by no means have to fret about lugging an enormous stack of paper to class in your workshop day — or working out of print credit on the library. (Flash again to undergrad, circa 2006, when my alma mater began charging college students for printing coursework on the library.)

There’s additionally the tactile facet of this new function; a whole lot of us inventive writers favor to handwrite improvement notes on our friends’ work as a result of not solely is it extra private, however as a result of Google Docs’ system for monitoring enhancing and feedback can shortly litter the web page. The distinction of typed textual content and handwritten notes on the identical web page could make the knowledge simpler for the author receiving suggestions to parse. Particularly in case you write in a enjoyable colour. (Shout out to Allison and her child blue gel pens for making constructive criticism enjoyable.)

However there’s a obtrusive difficulty with the start of its rollout: hand annotation is just obtainable on Android units. Home windows, macOS, iOS, ChromeOS, and even Chrome Browser customers on any of these units solely have the choice of viewing paperwork with markups, and displaying, hiding, and deleting them. In order that shortens the listing of suitable units to Android telephones and tablets. Many Okay-12 college students use non-touchscreen clamshell Chromebooks offered by the college for writing and suggestions assignments, and the older the coed, the extra possible they are going to have a Home windows or macOS clamshell laptop computer.

There’s one other difficulty: within the final 10 years, I can rely the variety of occasions I’ve seen one in every of my college students or grad college colleagues writing on a pill or 2-in-1 on half a hand. So whereas it looks as if Google has created an incredible function that can be utilized by educators and college students out and in of the classroom, most gained’t have suitable units.

If Google opened up the function to incorporate Home windows, macOS, and iOS units, that might assist alleviate the problem. Apple accounts for nearly 55.9 % of the pill market, in line with an October 2023 report published by Statista, and whereas the 2-in-1 laptop computer market is consistently rising, some colleges encourage their students to purchase convertible Windows laptops, relying on their main.

Google’s rollout of its new function began February twenty seventh for customers enrolled in Fast Launch. Customers below Google Customary launch will begin seeing the brand new function on March eleventh. Every rollout will take about 15 days.

Should you don’t know your launch observe, from the Admin console go to Menu > Account > Account settings > Preferences > Launch preferences > New options to examine.

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