Just Do This One Thing: Google Drive

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The very next step to teacher iPad success is to make sure you have Google Drive ready to go on both your laptop and your iPad.

Why this one thing matters: You can get to your stuff and share stuff from ANY Device!

  • Google drive is a filing system for documents and folders just like the one on your laptop. The only difference is that if you save things in your Google Drive, you can get to them on any device, anywhere, all the time.
  • You’ll use Google Drive to share things with your colleagues (like EBISS data) and students (like photo collections, research guides, assignments, etc.)
  • Your students will use this to turn their assignments back in to you.

Storing and sharing stuff is ONLY the beginning. There are about a billion more great uses for Google Drive, but you’ll learn those as you go. Today, just get it set up and organized in a way that makes sense to you.

There are 2 parts to the Setup and it will take a little longer than email took. Give yourself 10-15 minutes:

 

Part 1. Download and sign into the Google Drive App on your iPad
  1. Grab your teacher iPad, Go to the App store
  2. Do a search for the Google Drive App and Install it (Looks like this)images (3)
  3. Now open it and Sign in with your Bend LaPine Gapps account.

Please note: You ALL have Gapps accounts (Gapps stands for Google Apps), and your 1:1 iPad kids will have them too. This account gives you the ability to use Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Sites, etc.

Please also note (this is super-duper important): Your Gapps account login uses your usual District password and looks like this: 

Firstname.Lastname@Gapps.bend.k12.or.us

(Did you notice that word–Gapps?) I point it out, because SOME of you have a Google account set up with your district email address and it looks soooo close to this but doesn’t have the word Gapps. When you login to that one, you are not in your district Google Drive–you’re in your personal one. That’s confusing, right? My recommendation is to get rid of that other Google account! (here are some instructions to delete it. Good riddance! …of course you’ll move important stuff out of it before deleting…). If you want to have a personal Google account, that’s a great idea, but create it using your personal email address, not your school one. It will save you about a billion headaches later on, I assure you.

Logging in on your iPad looks like this:

IMG_0093 And then thisIMG_0095

And that will get you into your Bend LaPine Gapps folders. Does anything look familiar in there? If not, it will in a minute, because you’re going to put the same thing on your laptop. Then whatever you put in the files there will show up here.

Part 2. Access Google Drive on your Laptop.

There are two ways to access Drive on your laptop. The obvious way is to go to Googledrive.com and sign in using your Gapps account. Easy enough. But I would bet you ALL my Starbucks teacher gift cards what I’m about to show you will be far more useful to you, so keep going…

  1. Download and install the Google Drive App on your laptop by going here and clicking the download for Mac. This will pull it into your Downloads folder
  2. When it’s finished downloading, open your Downloads folder and click the file called “installgoogledrive.dmg”. This dialog box will appear: (Drag the Google icon into the Applications Folder icon)

Screen Shot 2015-05-20 at 4.22.14 PM

3.Now you just need to go to your Applications folder and double click on Google Drive to open it (hint: if you double click the applications folder in that same dialog box it will take you straight there).

4.  Follow the steps to Sign in using your Gapps account info. It will look almost exactly the same as it did on your iPad and then introduce you to Google Drive. The last step will show you that you can now access your drive from the top of your screen…but that’s not the cool part yet…

Screen Shot 2015-05-20 at 4.57.35 PM

5.  The really cool part is that if you open your Finder images (4) (the little happy face guy), you can find your Google Drive files right in with all your other files. What this means is you can drag and move stuff right into your Google Drive the same way you do with other folders!

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If you feel like being SUPER efficient, drag a copy of your Google Drive right over to your sidebar. That way it’s always easy to find.

Screen Shot 2015-05-20 at 5.09.25 PM

6. Finally, open the Google Drive folder and start organizing the way you like to organize (if you already had a bunch of stuff in there, you may need to give it some time to sync). When you take summer training classes, you’ll learn more about how to set this up for your classroom, but for now, use it for your own purposes (That’s by FAR the best way to learn a new tool. Use it for yourself).

Here’s a little task you can do to get the hang of how to use this tool. Since I know it’s probably about dinner time now, maybe this will help with that too??

1. Open your Google Drive on your Laptop and create a folder called Recipes (you can always delete it later).Screen Shot 2015-05-20 at 5.23.14 PM

2. Now do a little search for a recipe you’ve been wanting to make. (Here’s one for Cilantro Lime Fajita Salad I’ve been dying to try:

3. Most web recipes have a Print option Find it and click.Screen Shot 2015-05-20 at 5.27.08 PM

There it is…Click the printer.

 

4. Wait for the Print Dialog box to pop up and, go to the bottom left to make a PDF.

Screen Shot 2015-05-20 at 5.30.08 PM5. It will ask you where to save it…Save that Recipe into your Google Drive Recipe Folder!

6. NOW, grab your iPad, open the Google Drive app, click on the Recipe folder, and Bam, there it is…Right there in your kitchen with you and your teacher iPad (shhh…don’t tell them I told you to cook with your teacher iPad)RijaN

Here’s one last genius note for you: If you worry about your iPad in the kitchen, just put it in a gallon size ziploc bag. The touchscreen works right through the plastic. This is also a GREAT way for your kids to use their iPads during messy biology lab work. Smart, right?

 

I hope that gets you going on Google Drive. It may have taken a bit of tenacity, but I promise it will be well worth having it set up before your iPad trainings and especially before your happy September kiddos arrive with their iPads!

If you had trouble getting your iPad or Laptop to play nice on any of those steps, please don’t hesitate to call the helpdesk (ext.1200). They want to help you get it done and also try your recipe.

Next up: I’ll walk you through downloading Notability and show you some fantastic ways to use it for yourself and in your classroom.

For now, Happy Cooking!

One Reply to “Just Do This One Thing: Google Drive”

  1. It waited to get going on Google Drive until I had iPads in the classroom. I should of started before! It is truly the one tool I use daily, and it works so well with Google Classroom for handing out and turing in assignments too!