Google Drive, Google Drive, Google Drive!!!!

I thought it would only be appropriate to start this week's blog off with a little chant (today's blog title) about one of my favorite programs that we just so happened to be talking about this week in ICT!
Google Drive ladies and gentlemen!

This program, in my opinion, is one of the best things that could have happened to me in my university career. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google Drive let me give you the run down. This program gives you the ability to create documents, slideshows, spreadsheets, drawings, forms, and allows you to add other 'apps', for example the Desmos Graphing Calculator, all while storing it in a 'cloud' out on the web which makes it accessible from any device that has internet access! I know, sounds too good to be true, right? Wrong! It does exist and I find myself using it daily. 

Now you may think, "why is that useful when I only use one device which has all of my files on it?" this is where you and I may differ. I walk to school every day and therefore I do not haul my laptop around with me because: a) Living in Manitoba and it being winter I have a fear of slipping and falling on the ice and smashing my laptop in my bag and b) it adds quite a bit of weight to my already full-of-books bag, which can really take a toll on a girls back! But I digress, from a student standpoint this program makes it easy for me to access all of my school assignments no matter what device I may be on. I can be on my laptop in my apartment, my desktop when I am at home for the weekends, the school's computers at the University, my tablet when I am in class, and my smartphone when I am on the road. Did I mention I travel a lot? Oh, and another fun fact, it is fairly compatible with Apple products. I can edit my documents and files from my Ipad and my Iphone, fun I know! There are apps for Google Drive available that I have downloaded on my tablet and phone. Google Drive really takes the pain out of having to e-mail my assignment to myself every time I make a change to it in order to access it later when I am on a different device.

This isn't where the Google Drive's awesome features end. Have you ever been apart of a group project and found it extremely difficult to find days and times where you could all meet because of your busy schedules? If you have ever been a student of any type, weather it be high school or post secondary education, your answer is probably yes and if it isn't you are in the minority that has never had a problem with a group project, ever! Now being in education we know all about the negatives of group projects, but we are also told that they have to happen, it helps us become educators, and so on (do you catch my bias on the group project topic?). But once again, I digress, the great thing about Google Drive is that you can share your files with others and you can all work on, edit, add information at the same time or at separate times. This means that you don't have to be in the same room at the same time in order to complete a group project! There are more fun little features like adding comments to communicate on a certain part of the project, or open up the chat box feature and carry on a conversation while you work. If you are skeptical about this, fear not because I have done it before with complete success! Put five busy education students in a group together and we will overcome and come out in the end successful, with minimal stress I may add.

I know all of this sounds great but I haven't talked about my all time favourite feature about this program, boys and girls get ready for your mind to be blown. Google Docs has an automatic save feature, I know I can hear your gasps of amazement from here! I had the same reaction when I first found out about this feature. How many of us have been working on a project and got a great start or accomplished a huge chunk of a paper only to have your power go out or your computer crash and end up losing everything. I know the heart sinking feeling and I am all too familiar with being near finished an assignment only to loose about half of what you had been working on being completely mortified that you will never get back what you had been working on.

Now that I have touched on a few of the factors that make Google Drive a great program from a student standpoint, let me tell you about a few of the great features that make it awesome for a classroom. Number one, the "I forgot my homework" excuse. One of the great things about the cloud in Google Drive is that if your students forget their homework they can access it from any of the computers in the school, print and hand it in.

 Number two, your students can submit files to you by sharing their Google Drive file with you and it will pop up in your gmail and it is now stored in your Google Drive. Not only is this green by saving a lot of paper and ink but if you already have your students email assignments to you, the chance of the email being accidentally deleted or the attachment not working is eliminated. No formatting issues here!

The third great feature from a teacher standpoint is that you can have students share their assignments with you when they first start working on them and have access to their assignment while they are working on it. This means that you can see what students are actually keeping up and working on their assignments and what students are leaving theirs till last minute. This provides you, as a teacher, with the opportunity to approach that student and see if they are having difficulties with the project or get them back on track. This approach was actually used in my pre-service teaching placement and was very efficient!

 Another awesome thing that can be done with Google Drive is sharing assignments or notes with students so they can access these from home, providing they have internet access, if they forget a binder or the assignment at school (but that never happens, right?). This means that students can be more independent and still have access to that file themselves.

Before you go off running to create a Google Drive account thinking that it has no faults, I am going to burst your bubble. Like any program there are a few things that Google Drive could improve on. Firstly there are some factors in Google Docs that Microsoft or other word processing programs have that Google Docs does not support. For example, Google Docs does not have the "other first page" option where the second page in the document can be the first numbered page of the entire document. While this is frustrating, I have found it is not the end of the world- I just create a title page for the document in a new file, easy-peasy! There are a few other formatting issues that I have come across, such as the margins being quite small, so small that when you add your page number into a header that it is cut off if you do not press 'Enter' to move it down the page slightly. Once again, a minor issue but I feel as though it is good to let others know about it so you don't per chance print a document to only find out that your page number is only half showing on the paper, get frustrated, crumple up the paper in rage, and figure out how to solve the problem and print again with trial and error, all the while wasting of  paper, ink, and money. Three things most university students are short on.

Okay, now you can run off and create your Google Drive and have as much fun with it as I do. I am off to complete my paper due Monday, which I am doing on my Google Drive. Today's pictures brought to you by Evernote, a super cool program for another blog... another time.

Till then Folks!

Keep calm and pretend it's on the lesson plan!!!