Teacher struggling with a Word/Google Docs conundrum! Please help!

June 28, 2019 8:18 AM

I have created a set of graphic organizers in Microsoft Word, with lots of colourful shapes and multiple text boxes and the like. I actually would prefer to save them as Google Docs though, so that I can easily assign them in Google Classroom. My first issue is that while it's apparently possible just to upload Word docs to Google Drive, because these pages are so elaborate, they get kind of screwed up in the process.

Another consideration is that I'd love to set it up so these organizers are the background image, and then I could add text boxes in Google docs. That way, the kids only have to click and write, and then they won't be able to alter/accidentally delete from the template. How can I go about achieving this? Is it possible? Thanks!

posted by to recite so charmingly to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I'm not sure about how to make images background elements, but locking elements in Google Docs seems pretty straightforward, so once you have everything set up the way you want, here's the order of locking down parts you don't want to change:

To lock sections:

Select the text.
Click the Review button at the top of your document to switch to review mode.
Click the lock document icon under Collaboration. A drop-down list will appear.
Click Lock Selected content or Lock Unselected Content which will lock either the selected text or everything but the selected text.
posted by xingcat at 8:44 AM on June 28, 2019

You may be able to convert them to pdf and make them forms to accomplish this task. Saving the document after edit may be difficult from within the Google classroom system though.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:03 AM on June 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

Google Docs isn't really great for this, unfortunately. You might be able to do what you need with Google Slides.
posted by rossination at 5:32 PM on June 28, 2019

The chrome extension Kami will let you write on a PDF in Google docs. You could try exporting the word document as a PDF, uploading the pdf to Google drive, and opening it with the Kami extension on. For your students to write on it, they'd all have to have chrome with the Kami extension also.
posted by Salamandrous at 2:24 PM on June 30, 2019