Google Apps FAQ

This week, TCS secondary language arts folks got together and allowed me to geek out with them by sharing some info about Google apps.  In an effort to make the session more meaningful for attendees, I requested that teachers share their questions and Google-related classroom issues prior to the meeting, and some great questions came rolling in.  Here, for the purpose of future reference, are some of the most common questions and the responses shared.

Why Google apps?
In her book, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, danah boyd outlines certain affordances offered by networked social environments:

• persistence: the durability of online expressions and content
• visibility: the potential audience who can bear witness
• spreadability: the ease with which content can be shared
• searchability: the ability to find content.

While the focus of boyd's discussion is social media, it's useful to note that these traits also apply to the tools at our disposal through our system's Google Apps for Education domain.  Student-created content can remain in a single, easy-to-access online spot for years, following kids from grade to grade and facilitating the process of building student portfolios and other means of collecting and viewing evidence of student learning over time.  Viewing and sharing documents of all sorts is fairly simple, which leads to potential for easier and better collaboration and feedback for students.  Finally, Google has become synonymous with search - locating information within student documents or folders is just a CTRL-F away.

What do I do when all the screens in my room say "Google Drive is unreachable"?
Google apps and our system's filter sometimes don't get along.  To avoid this problem, students and teachers should log in to iBoss before beginning work in Google Drive or other Google tools.  Here's a quick link to the login page: bit.ly/tcsiboss.  It might be helpful to bookmark it for easy future access.

How do I set up student collaboration from a shared template?
There may be documents that you want to be able to distribute electronically to students - a lab report or a major work data sheet, for example.  The first step is to create the document itself or to upload a document you already have (i.e. a Word document).  Once you've got the document in your own Google Drive, you must decide how to share it.  Chances are you'll share more than one document over the course of  a school year, so the best bet is to create a folder to house them all.  Name it, then click the Share button and allow anyone with the link to have Can View rights.  Give your students the link to the folder, and they can access all of the documents you place within it without being able to edit the originals.  When a student opens a document they wish to edit, they can make a copy (an option under File in Google Docs) to save in their own Google Drive, ensuring that they have a template to work from and your originals remain clean.   

How do students save to a flash drive for editing at home?
My initial thought on this is that students and teachers should start leaning on cloud resources like Google Drive so that they don't have to carry around flash drives anymore.  Google Drive and the items created within it are accessible from anywhere you've got an internet connection (and at least a browser or Drive app), so it's not necessary to haul physical media from school to home and back.  However, if students still wish to work outside of Google Drive at home, they can download their files (saving them as Word, PowerPoint, PDF, or other file types) and save them to a flash drive.  Please note that, once students return to school, they will need to upload the changed files back into Google Drive.

How can students submit assignments to their teacher?
This question leads us into workflow territory, and what works best for each teacher and classroom is likely to vary.  My two favorite options, though, are below.  Please note that there are many other ways to set up Google Drive to work for your classroom assignment turn-ins; experiment to find what works best for you and your students.

Option 1:  Create a Google form for students to fill out in order to submit an assignment.  Create the following fields:

• First name
• Last Name
• Class 
• Assignment Link

Be sure to check the required question box for each so that students cannot submit a response without filling in all of their information.  Then send the form and share a link to it with your students.  Student responses will be collected as a spreadsheet in Google Drive, which makes sorting and accessing their submitted work a fairly easy process.

Option 2:  Create a shared folder for each student.  If your students will be submitting work via Google Drive on a regular basis, you might want to avoid creating a Google form for every single assignment.  Instead, have students create a new folder, title it (include class period, student name, etc), and share it with you with Can Edit rights.  Any documents that they create within the folder or move into it will automatically be accessible by you.  This means they never have to take an additional step to share their work, and you can also pop in to their documents to provide feedback as they work.

What apps should we be using?
The Chrome Web Store is packed with great apps for classroom use, along with plenty of mediocre ones.  Here are a few worth checking out:

Video editing - WeVideo and Pixorial
Flowcharts and mindmaps - LucidChart and MindMeister
Annotating videos - VideoNotes
Photo editing - Pixorial, PicMonkey, Pixlr

Do you have tips or questions about Google Drive?  Please share in the comments!


Laren Hammonds is an 8th grade English teacher at Rock Quarry Middle School.  She's @_clayr_ on Twitter and blogs about her classroom experiences at Game to Learn.