Student Window

Salone is a rising senior at Stanford University and has spent her summer interning with the Search Marketing team in Mountain View. As summer jobs wrap up and stores abound with “Back to School” sales, the end of summer vacation is imminent. For me, the end of August means registering for classes, endless packing sessions, shopping trips to buy a growing list of “essentials,” and the inevitable jitters that accompany the start of a new academic year. Whether you’ve been dying to get back to school or suffering from the end of summer blues, we at Google put together some study tips to help you jumpstart your school year. From getting a head start on your reading and research interests with Google Books and Google Scholar to slicing and dicing your research with timeline or wonderwheel, we hope these tips help you stay on top of your classes and get the most out of Google. But don’t fret – we know that back to school is also about catching up with your friends after a long summer. So take some time out of your busy class schedule and plan some downtime with Google, too. Good luck and here’s to a great first semester! Posted by Salone Kapur, Associate Product Marketing Manager Intern, Search Marketing Team

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Jumpstart your school year with Google

Have you ever had a hard time keeping track of a big group project? Do you ever wish you could find a way to promote a competition or school event? Want to get more attention for your student group or club? In case you haven’t met yet, please allow us to introduce you to Google Sites. Google Sites are a great tool for students – for example, as a way to work with others to collaborate on a group project. You can embed a calendar to keep track of deadlines; or a Google spreadsheet to keep track of your research. When it comes time to turn in your project, you can even include videos or slide shows right in your site. If you want to promote a school event like a class election, you can create a site with videos and information about all of the candidates and even embed a Google form so students can vote or send feedback. Here’s an example site for a Ski Club , to give you an idea of what’s possible. To see how some students are using Google Sites in the classroom, check out our new Sites for Teachers page. Posted by Ashley Chandler, Google Docs and Sites User Operations team

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Using Google Sites for school projects

In the spirit of graduation season, we’re doing a series of posts every Friday throughout the summer that provide tips for graduating seniors, so stay tuned for more! Transitioning into post-college life can be pricey, so chances are, you’re living (or planning to live) with roommates. Managing expenses and a tight budget can be tricky, especially when you’re not just managing your own. So we’re letting you know about the ’shared house expenses’ spreadsheet available in the Google Docs templates gallery. It covers all the usual house hold expenses: electricity, gas, water, Internet, phone, groceries, etc. Just enter dollar values for how much people spend on each item, and the spreadsheet will automatically display charts and details like how much each person owes everyone else. This spreadsheet template was actually created by Googlers who live together and have to manage their own household expenses together. Here’s a video of them talking about their own experience. And if you’re also interested in better managing your own money, you can browse the template gallery to find other helpful tools, like the personal budget tracker and the credit card payoff calculator . For more Apps news Did you know that Google Docs is just one of several products in Google Apps? To get updates and news on all the Apps products, check out the Google Apps Blog ! Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Grad tip: Manage home expenses in a Google Docs spreadsheet

Back when I was in college (which wasn’t all that long ago), we used a command-line program called Pine to check our email. It was much faster than the school webmail, but you had to learn all these keyboard shortcuts just to get anything done. I remember sitting around the dorm, eagerly sharing tips with friends (like “Did you know that ^Y sends you to the previous message?”) Those days are over for most folks, and my friends and I now share tips with each other about how to be more efficient with Gmail. We thought lots of people would be interested in these kinds of tips, so we asked Googlers for their best tips and tricks on how they use Gmail, and put the best of these into a guide at www.gmail.com/tips , entitled “Become a Gmail Ninja.” We even made a printable version of the guide that you can pin to your wall or keep on your desk. And for the first 1024 of you who want them, we’ll send a limited-edition, laminated guide for free. Just fill out this form with your address. Sorry, we can only ship to addresses in the US. If you’re not one of the lucky 1024, don’t fret because you can still buy a laminated guide at www.barcharts.com/gmail . If you’re already a Gmail ninja and have your own tips you’d like to share, let us know and we’ll add the best ones to the online guide. *Our lawyers asked us to make sure it was clear that your contact information won’t be maintained in any way and this offer is “void where prohibited and only while supplies last.” Posted by Zach Yeskell, Gmail marketing manager

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Are you a Gmail Ninja?