Google Drive - the hub for all of your data - Part One.

Google Drive - making the data cloud work for you.

This is part one in an educational series on Google Drive.  The other blogs in this series will cover all things Google Drive, including file sharing, working on Microsoft Office Files, Team Drives, and backing up your laptop data using the Google Drive Stream application.

G-Suite for Education has many features you can use with your students, from word processing to creating incredible web sites for students projects that can shared with parents.  At the core of all of this, is your Google Drive.  Think of Google Drive as the repository for all of your assignments, photos, etc., that you acquire as a educator over time.  What's more, your Google drive has unlimited space, and can be used anywhere where there is internet.  You can also access your Google Drive files offline if need be, which I'll cover in this series.

Learning about Google Drive will help you understand how everything else is shared and organized in the G-Suite world!

Educational verse public Google Drive.  For many who also have a gmail account, you might be wondering what the difference is between you G-Suite and Gmail Public Google Drive.  So lets drive down into some details.  You school account has some essential differences over your public drive, with privacy being the main factor.  Your G-Suite drive is covered by an educational agreement where by Google has signed a contact guaranteeing your privacy.  You public gmail account might is still private, however, Google only gives you 15 gigs of space, vs unlimited for education.

As I mentioned, your Google Drive is where all of your G-Suite files are located.  For example, your Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Forms, etc., are all located in your Google Drive and are shared with others from your Google Drive.   In fact, just about everything you create within G-Suite is stored online in your Google Drive, and this is what allows you to share just about anything with someone else for collaborative work.  Having everything inside of Google Drive also allows you to always know where your data is, and where you can go to share it with others, including students within your Google Classrooms, or with fellow colleagues in the school.  Never again will you have two versions of the same file, it's all in Google Drive all the time!

You can access Google Drive on all of your devices, including your cell phone, your iPad or tablet, your computer or Chromebook.

In my next article I'll be covering how to work with your Google Drive on your computer to organize and share your documents with students and fellow educators.