I am very excited to a part of this great Bright Ideas Blog Hop for March. We have over 150 bloggers sharing their BEST and BRIGHTEST ideas to help you get over your winter blues and get energized for the year-end count down. I have 3.5 months left! Where has this school year gone?
One of my favourite things to use in my classroom is Google Drive formally Google Docs. This free web based service allows students or staff to create documents, presentations, spreadsheets or upload previously created material. All of the items are stored electronically in the Google cloud and can be accessed from almost any device with an internet connection.
Google Drive has six basic apps that allow you to store and create items. My students use these apps to collaboratively create works. The best part of Google Drive apps is that more than one person can be logged in and editing the document at any given time.
This past term my grade team used Google Drive – Document App to co-create our report card comments. No more emailing files back and forth. We editing each other’s work simultaneously and could tell exactly who made what changes to each section.
If you dislike emailing documents to and from work you can upload your documents to the Google Drive in the Folder App and use the search function to locate exactly what you need.
As a classroom teacher you can have students share their in progress work with you and then you can provide instant feedback on their writing from your computer while the are working.
Do any of you use Google Drive in the classroom? I’d love to get some new ideas in the comments below. Have any questions about Google Drive? Chat with me in the comments below.
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I love Google Drive as well. I've used it for everything this year because many of my resources have been found online. I have google drive everywhere. The one thing I love about it is I can have google drive on all my devices, and I never miss out on organizing my online files right when I download them.
You explained it so well!!! What a great idea to use it in the classroom, with your students! I can't wait to find an excuse to use it with my little people and their parents! Thank You!
I love using Google drive in my grade 5 classroom. I use it a lot for differentiation. I have my students grouped in the different subjects, then push out documents to each group based on their needs. I love that kids in groups can all be working together on the same doc, while others may be working independently.
I use the Google sites for my class web page and the kids and their parents have access to it. I create all my lessons in a Google presentation with all sorts of youtube links etc, so even if kids are absent they can follow along with what we are doing in class. On the class announcements page is our daily homework and any announcements from me or the school.
I also use something called Hapara Teacher Dashboard. It is not a google product but Hapara works with Google to make it linkable ( is that word??) Google it!! It has made Googling with my kiddos even better. It is not a free product but worth the money I spent on it. For a class of 18 student accounts it cost me $6.00/student.
Google drive has definitely been a blessing when I need to open things on different devices! Thanks for commenting!
There are so many ways to use Google products with all ages and parents. You can create forms for parents or mailing lists etc. Enjoy thanks for stopping by!
Oh i love all of your ideas and how you differentiate! Thanks for sharing!
At our school, we are doing away with Microsoft Office. This was a reality check for me and really pushed me into using Google Drive, but it was a push that I desperately needed. The more that I use Google Drive, the more I absolutely love it! I just talked about Google Drive on my blog, http://teachwithheelson.blogspot.com/ , this morning. I am currently using a Google Form as a homework assignment for students. It is great because Google automatically creates a spreadsheet for the assignment and adds student responses to it as they submit their assignments. I am also starting a project this week, and plan to share more on it later, in which students are going to use Slides to create group presentations. I love the differentiation ideas that you all were talking about earlier and plan on trying some of the ideas with my next unit.
Love your blog Kristy! The colors and design are top notch. I really would love to know how you make all the cute graphics like the postage stamp above or like the ones that end up being the thumbnail on pinterest. They look simple enough to make but am hoping you'll have an alternate to photo shop. 🙂 Thank you!
WOW so nice books have to share with us and essaypenguins providing books content for students.
I NEED to start using this…I have heard nothing but great things about it. Thanks for the tips!
Jen
http://endeavorsineducation.blogspot.com/
Very informative and unique tips dear. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Lovely Read!
http://beauty2beautytips.blogspot.com/
http://factsaboutcanceruk.blogspot.com/
I also love using google drive even at my work..
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I currently use google drive for all my lessons, teacher resources, and documents. I want my students to begin using the drive. Is there a way for them to access ONLY my drive and not email or is it easier to just create a new gmail for classroom purposes? Thanks.
Nancy
Hi Nancy, I am not quite sure what you question is. I do not give students my password to Google Drive. I share a folder with them, and that is all that they can see. Send me an email if you want more ideas. Thanks for the comment.
My school doesn't use the doc functions as much, but we have group folders for each math subject (geometry, algebra 2, etc) to share tests, quizzes, and resources. We also each had a directory to put in our lesson plans, shared with our supervisors.
I had a separate directory for student resources, but coogle classroom is buch better for that.