Producing collaborative products can be difficult in the classroom environment without the proper tools. Students may accidentally overwrite work, fail to contribute equally to a project. forget portions of work at home or lose physical copies. Teachers may find it difficult to provide feedback, to access work in progress or to provide ways for students to effectively collaborate on projects. Google Drive provides solutions to the barriers listed above. With Google Drive; Products can be accessed and edited by up to fifty users simultaneously (Google, n.d.).
Changes to products are tracked by user (Google, n.d.).
Work is automatically saved and accessible from any computer with an internet connection (Google, n.d.).
Feedback can be directly posted on products (Google, n.d.).
Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration can occur (Google, n.d.).
Below is a brief overview of collaborative tools integrated into Google Drive covered in this training. Theses tools are available in Google Documents, Google Presentations, Google Spreadsheet, and Google Drawing. Tools available in Google Forms and Google Site will be covered in upcoming trainings.
Comments: Users with permission to edit can leave comments within a file.
Connecting More Applications: Google Applications relevant to you content area can be added and utilized though Google Drive.
Editing Simultaneously: Multiple users with edit permission can work on the same file without overwriting one another.
Research Tool: Users can perform research activities from within a file.
Revision History: Changes to files are tracked by user. Users may view revisions and choose to revert to earlier versions of files.
Templates: Users can create templates that cannot be overwritten and access templates from Google or other users.
You may access training for each tool by clicking on the tool above or by using the sidebar to the left. Tool training need not be finished in any particular order. You may want to start at the top and go through each tool or you may want to start with tools you feel are most useful. However, the section titled Integrating Collaboration Tools is intended as a application page to aid you in applying what you have learned.
If you need some review before starting this training, you can use the links below. I have also included a step by step guide for basic skills in the "files" section.
Google Drive Training Document
Creating Documents and Folders