February 15th – A Week With Google Drive Day 1

A new month means a new “A Week With…” series, this time focused on Google Drive.  The last “A Week With…” series focused on Google Docs which was some features we recognize from other word processing programs, but Google Drive doesn’t look like anything we’ve really seen before.  It has some similar functionality as the “My Documents” folder on your PC, but can do some pretty amazing things.  The first few in this series will be on basic functionality – then we’ll get into some cool stuff, so stay tuned!

February 15th – “A Week With…” Google Drive

Google Drive just kinda happened.  The world (and education world) was just moving along, starting to collaborate and figuring out this whole Google Docs thing when BAM! Google Drive appeared.  Google Docs and Sheets existed but a way to easily store/access them didn’t – until Google Drive appeared.  Although online (or cloud based) it had a lot of similar features, just the teachers that I spoke to about it had a hard time wrapping their head around it.  They had dozens of Google Docs and sometimes Sheets but they weren’t organized the way teachers want them to be.  The first thing I had teachers do was organize their drive to feel some calm (teachers don’t do well in messy situations).

A few tips to help organize your Google Drive:
1.) Create Folders – just like on your hard drive, you can create your own folder structure/tree.  Do it.  I’ll help you to have a place where everything goes.  My suggestion: create a separate folder for each year and just make copies of assignments from year to year, but updating information or outcome based on your new students.

Right Click to create a folder in Google Drive, then create a file structure inside of folders to keep organized!

2.) Use colors.  Being color blind, it doesn’t help me, but I’ve heard that it’s a great way to be more organized and quicker.  Plus its a feature on both Mac OS and Google Drive so there must be something to it!

Right click to “Change Color >” and select a color scheme that helps you organize. Also notice the coloring on the “My Drive” dropdown.

3.) Find the Grid vs List button and use it frequently.  I’m always partial to the list view, but when your folders start to take over the viewable size of your screen, then it’s time to switch to grid view and drop and drag to organize.

Using the List vs Grid View button to change views and help organize files, then the list view to see the details of the folder.

Take some time with these 3 tools to create folders, organize with colors and switch between tiles and list and within a few minutes you’ll be organized and ready to move on with the “A Week With…” series.