Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Hierarchy of Shared Folders using Google Drive

Our school, Seymour High School (SHS), recently and unofficially began using Google Apps for Education.  As such we were given SHS Google accounts.  If you already had a Google that you created using an SHS email, the new account assimilates the old account into the new one.  May not be what you wanted, oh well...

If you created it with a different email, you are given a choice to merge them.

I chose to keep them separate but since I have been using Google for years, I have amassed lots of folders and docs that a want use.  Google makes it very easy to share the stuff that I created on my personal account with the SHS account.  My personal Google Drive is still separate from my SHS Drive, but some folders are shared in both locations.

Sharing folders (and docs) with students was the next big challenge to overcome.  Fortunately, Mike Oberdick, Eric DeMarco, and Mike Sirowich were already on this.  The solution they came up with is to create a folder and share it with the entire class.  Anything put in that folder is accessible to anyone you shared it with.  Cool, just put docs there and everyone has it, save paper...  BE CAREFUL, however, even private folders put under that folder is viewable.

Next, have each student create a folder and share it with you.  This allows the student to save docs or any assignment to that folder and it will be accessible to you to comment on or grade.  These folders should NOT be saved in the shared class folder but in a separate folder so it is only between you and the student.  

Example
Below is a copy of my SHS Drive.  The folder marked (2013) shows this year’s classes.  The folder marked Shared AP Documents is shared with the entire class - everyone in the class has access to whatever is put in there.  The folder marked Period E (2013) is private - although shared with my personal Drive.  The folder marked Student Folders is also private, however, saved in that folder are the individual folders that the students created and shared with me.


No comments:

Post a Comment