Google Drive

If you are using Google Apps for Education (GAFE) in your school you have surely recognized the power of Google Drive. If you have not had a chance to work with it let me give you a little information as to why you should save your files in your very own Google Drive.

Here is a brief youtube clip that will help you better see how you can use Google Drive and what it can do for you. Also, here is a link to a document that was produced by Google to help you with the basic options and features.

When I was introduced to GAFE, it was the first thing that was taught. Rightly so, Google Drive is one of the main selling points for any teacher or school that is considering the implementation of GAFE. Google Drive in a school district allows for unlimited storage capacity. In my district, we have personal drives housed on a server that we could save files. We have limited access to these files through software called stoneware. There were limitations associated with this access. With Google Drive, you can access your files from any computer or any devise with ease.

One of the most powerful tools that is provided to you with Google Drive is the sharing option. If you want to share a document or file with someone the process is instantaneous. There is no need to use email as a means to share files. There are also options with the way that you want to collaborate with the person that you are sharing with. For instance, if you only want the person to be able to view your document, change the share settings. Google Drives inside a district account can also be protected by establishing limitations for who has access to the files in yours or your students drive.

Google Drive is a very powerful tool to help improve work flow, collaboration, and organization. I highly recommend it to any educator!

This is a snapshot of the Google Dive Administrative Options Tool Bar. It enables you to generate a link to a file/folder, view share options, preview the document, remove file, and more actions. You can customize how the file/folders are displayed, organized, and view the actions history, as well as settings of your drive.

  Your Google Drive will have a navigation panel where you can select which part of your drive you want to display. There is a section where you can view all document that have been shared with you, all your photos that are uploaded to your drive, the recent documents that have been uploaded, favorited docs, and trash. Documents are not completely eliminated until you remove them completely from your drive via your trash folder.

Share options are an important consideration because there are times that you may want someone to be able to collaborate and edit the document that you share, and sometimes you do not want them to alter the file. For example, you can share a document with your class and not allow them to edit it. They can make their own copy instead. This link can be used to imbed the URL of the document located on the drive.

There are additional options that you can use to move a file, rename, view details, manage the various versions of a file or document, make a copy, or download to your hard drive.