Google

Google has a large range of products available nowadays. Google is mostly known for its Web Search, which enables you to search about anything through billions of web pages. However, if you are looking for medias, you could look in Youtube, Books or Image and Video Search. For something more specific, you can have a look at Blog Search, Google Scholar or News.

Other products are also available outside of the searching field. Google + is a social network. Google Maps helps you find places or get directions. Google Calendar allows you to do time-management and to receive notices on the day of an event. Gmail is an email service. Google translate is a basic translation tool.  Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service.

This post will focus more on Google Drive and how it can be used effectively at school.

What exactly is Google Drive ? 

Google Drive is a free file storage and synchronization service. What does that mean? A file storage is also called cloud storage because it is accessible from any computer or mobile device with connection to internet. For example, if I create a document on my computer and save it in my Google Drive account, I can later have access to it on my mobile device or on the school computers. What about the synchronization service? It means that the file will be update with the latest modifications, wherever you modified it and have access to it. Here is a video about it.

The creation of a Google Drive account

To connect to Google Drive, you need to have a Google account (if you don’t have one, you can create it in just a few steps!) The advantage of using the Google account is that everything you have with Google is shared between the products. Once you have got an account, you can install the desktop app to have an offline access to the files. This last step is optional, if the school computers don’t allow you to install apps, the web account is enough. Here are some tips and tricks to help you along the process.

How Google Drive can be useful for the students?

There used to be a product called Google Docs which is now included in Google Drive. The files that can be created with Google Drive are documents, presentations, spreadsheets, forms, drawings and you can add more to the list with the many applications available. The files can be shared with many users and modified by any of t

hem at the same time. This is a way for students to work on a group project from their home.  Furthermore, if they are not working at the same time on the file, as one connects on his account, he can see the latest updates. Furthermore, the teacher could have access by Google Drive to the students’ homework.

How Google Drive can be useful for the teachers?

This product by Google can be useful for teachers in many ways. First of all, they can use it to share documents like homework, readings and results with their students by creating a Google Group. Moreover, instead of using checklists, they can use Google Forms to easily see if a student has handed in a homework, camp money or a signature from the parents. All the assignments can be kept in Google Drive; this way you save space and time not searching among all the mixed papers. There can be a file for each student or each term.

In conclusion

This is only one of many products by Google that can be integrated in schools. This file storage and synchronization service, as I demonstrated, is easy to use and is a great tool wether for students or teachers.

As for the other products from Google (which I listed above), I will discuss more about them in my next post!

Have a good week !