The complete Google Blog post covering the upgrade is worth reading.

One great way to print less to hard copy is to print to PDF. This is functionally equivalent to saving whatever you’re looking at as a PDF file.

One a Mac this is a built in function. Click on “PDF” in the lower left of the print menu. (See below)

On a PC there are some programs that have a “Save as PDF” function built in. To make it so you can save as PDF from any Windows program you’ll need to install a PDF printer driver. Once the driver is installed a PDF printer will show up in your printer list. To save as PDF all you need to do is print the file like you normally would and select the PDF printer instead of your paper printer. You’ll then be presented with a Save As option. Save the file. Viola.  You’re done.

There are two PDF drivers (for PCs) that I recommend: CutePDF Writer and PDF Creator. They are both small, free, and easy to use. PDF creator is a little more lightweight and CutePDF Writer has a slightly more refined user interface. You can’t go wrong with either.

This is how I have been submitting my grade books and other reports for the past year and I have been loving it.

Note: This software is not currently installed on school computers. Hopefully it will be installed soon.

As a  bonus the equation editor is graphical AND it shows the LaTeX code, which can be directly edited!

It turns out there is an easy way to spell check your progress reports directly in the form.

The reason you can’t spell check your progress reports directly is that they are “protected”. This is a setting you can turn on in a Word document where you can limit what changes can be made. In this case the protection is done so that the automatically populated fields (name, grade, etc.) aren’t accidentally changed by a teacher. A document can be protected with a password or without a password. If a password is set you need to know that password in order to unprotect the document. If no password is set when the protection is set, all you need to do is press the “unprotect” button, which is sometimes a little tricky to find. The big downside to protecting a document is that is disables many features, including…. spell check.

So, to enable spell check, you need to unprotect the document. Fortunately for us, no password has been set on the progress reports. So, you just need to flip the right switch. Once your progress reports are unprotected, you can spell check to your heart’s content. While your progress reports are unprotected, the autopopupated fields can be changed. It would be good practice to reprotect your progress reports after you’re done spell checking.

Here’s how you unprotect a Word document:

Microsoft Word 2003 (Windows): Open the document, click on “Tools” –> “Unprotect Document”. Voila. You’re done. When you’re done spell checking I recommend turning protection back on without a password so you don’t accidentally change any of the autopopulated fields.

Microsoft Word 2007 (Windows): Open the document and click on “Review” –> “Protect Document” –> “Formatting and Editing Options” –> “Stop Protection”. You can watch a flash video of the procedure right here.

Microsoft Office 2009 (OS X): Open the document and click on “File” –> “Save As” –> “Options” –> “Show All” –> “Security” –> “Unprotect Document”. After you hit okay a couple times, you’ll be prompted to save the file. Once you’ve saved the file (give it a new name) it will be unprotected. You can watch a flash video of the procedure right here.

Please remember that while your progress reports are unprotected, the autopopupated fields can be changed. It would be good practice to reprotect your progress reports after you’re done spell checking. If you do reprotect your document, it would be good practice to read them over at least one more time to make sure you didn’t make any accidental changes while spell checking.