Google Drive & Documents

The gmail account comes with unlimited (yes, unlimited!) storage. To access, click on the square of little squares on the right top, that gives you access to all your apps. Please see the images below. The coloured triangle is the symbol for Drive.

NB

It is strictly against school policy to store any sensitive data on removable objects like external hard drives, cd's, USB keys. You can use these for lesson plans, but not for anything containing the children's (or staff's) names. We try to avoid headlines like this: https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/up-100-students-info-sent-14391824

Similarly, think about your passwords, and come up with a system that allows you to regularly change it, without needing to write it down. Some guidance can be found here: https://www.lifewire.com/creating-a-strong-password-system-153307

Please do NOT use the same password for google/schoolbase as the ones you use to login to your computer, and do NOT automatically save your passwords for schoolbase.

Drive

For more detailed instructions on the drive, please go to the learning centre of Google here.

NB: Please do not store any sensitive data, like pupil addresses etc. on the site. For this kind of information refer to SchoolBase, which is more secure.

In the Drive you have your own area and Team Drives. It is possible to create more team drives if you wish . At the moment there is a shared drive called "Secondary Team Drive" a "Primary Team Drive" and an "All staff" where you can find things that are relevant for everyone in the school.

In your own area (My Drive) you can upload documents or create folders or new documents by right-clicking and selecting the option you want. You can share any document with colleagues in the domain. You can also share with people outside of the domain, but be aware that the document is then accessible to anyone with the link. When you rightclick you see all the options. Some of these are also available on top after you have selected a document, see image below. From left to right: Get sharable link (that you can e-mail to people), share (with certain people), preview, remove, more actions. On the right, Grid view, view details and settings.

Documents

You can use "Docs" to create the equivalent of Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Slides, Forms and even websites like this one. Rightclick in Drive to create a new document, put in a title. It saves automatically, which is why there is no save button. You can access these documents from anywhere with an internet connection, as it is stored in "the Cloud".

You can upload any other type of document and open them with "sheets, Docs or another google application. This will create a second version of the document, both stored at the same location in your drive. There may be some lay-out issues. If you have created a document you wish to use in class, without the need for modifications, save it as a pdf document (File - Save as, or File - Export to PDF, or File - print to PDF printer), and upload that to minimise these.

Sharing

It is possible for several people to work on a document AT THE SAME TIME. This way, you have no more need to send each other attachments. Simply rightclick on a document to share with a person.

If you need the input of a large number of people on the contents of something, for example, you want to know who is coming to an event, you can create a survey with "Forms".

More detailed instructions on how to use Docs can be found here.

And some instructions on how to organise yourself can be found at the end of this slideshow.