Doc Hub - One Minor Plus over Kami

Although I enthused recently over Kami, the Chrome app Doc Hub has some features to recommend it. The free version is fine for having students fill in pdfs.

You still need to direct it to save in Google Drive; it will not do so automatically. It also saves its own copy of the edited document, so if a student forgets to save it to Google Drive, it is not irretrievably lost.

The one feature it has that I really like is a silly one, but it makes my life easier.

You can insert all sorts of symbols on the document, like check marks and exes.

You can change the size of the symbol and its fill color.

True, you could use the Draw feature on Kami (and as I use a pen stylus instead of a mouse, I can actually drawing something that looks pretty decent - wouldn't want to try that with a mouse). But I like being able to insert those symbols directly on to the students' filled out pdf "papers."

Add a custom character in Chrome

One of the strange things about the world of Chromebooks is that certain shortcuts don't work anymore, or work the way they used to. 
For example, if you're on a PC in Word, and you type alt+10003, you'll insert a check mark. √

If you're in Chrome and on a PC, you can do that by typing alt+251. See? √.

But if you're on a Chromebook, gornisht helfen as my people say. (Nothing helps.)

If you're in Google Docs, you can go to Insert > Special Characters > and then search for Check Mark. Click it and it will insert a check mark into your doc. If you need one elsewhere (like if you're correcting a pdf in Google Classroom on Kami), you can do that in Google Docs first and copy and paste it. Every. Single. Time. You. Need. One.

OR
You can add the Special Characters extension to Chrome. Highlight and copy a check mark (Here - take mine √ ).
Right click the extension in the upper-right hand corner  

and choose Options. 


Click Add Character, paste the check into the empty box. Name it and save it. (And, while you're at it, you can delete the standard characters in the English set if you don't need them.)

Now, whenever you need a check mark (or whatever it is you need to insert not infrequently into text - a winky face or a skull and crossbones) click on the extension and select the mark, and it will now be copied to your clipboard, ready for you to hit ctrl+v, which, happily, still works on Chromebooks. 
(Or right-click, Paste, if you can't give up your mouse.) 
Et voila - √  😉 or ☠ or whatever.