Digital File Organization for Teachers | EDTech Made Easy - ORGANIZING YOUR GOOGLE DRIVE

welcome back to another episode and buy another episode I really mean the second episode of EdTech made easy where I get tutorials on different educational technology tools and I give tips and tricks for implementing them in your own classroom for those of you that don't know me my name is Michelle Perret I'm a fourth grade teacher in Maryland and I also serve as my school's ecoach which means that I help teachers integrate technology in their classrooms in today's video I wanted to give you all some tips and tricks for organizing your Google Drive so you can use it as efficiently as possible now you could argue that Google Drive isn't in a tech tool but I use it to store all of my files as a teacher so it's pretty essential if you are not familiar with Google Drive it is a file storage system offered by Google in order to use Google Drive you do have to have a Google account which I highly recommend having anyway they are free so I will leave a link down in the description box that you can use to sign up for one if you haven't already one reason I love using Google Drive is that you get 15 gigabytes of free storage now that amount is shared between your Google Drive Gmail and Google photos however that is still a ridiculous amount for free if you do need additional storage you can upgrade your account for an additional monthly or yearly fee but I do think it's pretty affordable overall another reason I love Google Drive is that it is cloud-based storage which means the files are stored on the Internet as opposed to using a flash drive or an external hard drive quick story when I was in college I saved every single file to a flash drive because I would start the files on my computer and then I would take them to the library to work on them it was all fun and games until I had less a plan for an entire week of my student teaching internship saved all the files to my flash drive and took the flash drive to the library to print them out well I managed to roll my chair into the flash drive which was plugged into the CPU unit the entire thing broke in half none of the files were recoverable and I literally sat in the library at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night sobbing it was truly one of the lowest points in my college career ever since then I have been a huge fan of cloud-based storage so that I can access my files anywhere at any time just by logging into my Google account now I really want to focus this video on organizing your Google Drive so let's jump right in I thought it would be easiest to start from scratch with a Google Drive because obviously both of my google drives are already pretty organized so I actually am borrowing Billy's Google Drive so I can you know get them set up for success obviously there are no files currently in this drive but I will show you how to add those later on in the video when I organize my Google Drive I like to start with broad categories for my files now obviously those categories will be different for everyone depending on what type of files you have and that's okay I'm gonna walk you through the categories that I personally use for my teaching Google Drive in order to create my categories I'm actually going to add folders to my drive I can do this by clicking on the new button and then clicking on folder you will then be prompted to type a name for your folder which is your category name personally I always type the names in all capital letters I don't know why I just feel like it sticks out and it works for me first I want to create a folder called fourth grade which will house all of the files related to my team teachers and our grade level as a whole after I type the name of the folder I'm gonna click the blue create button now I need to repeat those steps to create a new folder for personal documents which will house all of the documents that apply only to me and not my grade level then I need folders for math and science which will house all of the files related to those subject areas I also need a folder for technology which will house all of the files related to different technology tools now you may also want a folder for your school to house any documents or files that relate to your school as a whole so things like forms that your school uses or agendas and so on personally my school has a shared Google Drive folder that the entire staff has access to so instead of creating my own folder I just added that shared folder to my Google Drive you will notice that the folders you just created will appear in alphabetical order if you prefer you can display the folders in a list view by clicking the list icon up at the top but personally I just enjoy them the way that they're laid out currently now if you're fine with your folders being in alphabetical order you can leave them the way they are however I'm a little bit on the picky side and I want my folders to be in a specific order they on the way that I use them if you want your folders to show up in a specific order you can actually number them sequentially so they show up in your preferred order let's say I want my personal Documents folder to show up first I can right click on the folder and then click on rename I'm then gonna type a number one in front of the folder name so that it appears first then I'm gonna repeat those steps for the other folders until I have them in the sequential order that I want them in now I'm sure this comes as no surprise to many of you but not only do I like my folders in a certain order but I also like to assign them a specific color in order to change the color of a folder you can right click on the folder and then click on change color there are 24 set colors that you can choose from now you can either keep your folders in rainbow order and go red orange yellow and so on or you can assign them colors at random I like my folders to go in rainbow order so I'm gonna change the color of my first folder to red the next folder to orange and so on until they each have a color now that I have my broad category set up I want to create subcategories within each of those categories so things stay a little bit more organized in order to create the subcategories I'm going to create folders inside of the folders that I've already created let's start with my personal Documents folder I'm going to double click on the folder in order to open it up and I'm gonna repeat the same steps that I already explained earlier in the video to create a folder I'm just gonna click on new and then click on folder I'm gonna create several folders for my different sub categories I'm gonna have one for paystubs one for certificates one for observations one for sub plans and one for PD forms just as I did with my broad categories I can number these to put them in a specific order but personally I don't really care as much about my sub categories being in order I really just care about those broad categories being in order so I just leave my sub category folders as is however I do like to change the color of my sub category folders to match the color of the main folder there is an easy way to do this instead of individually changing the color of every folder you can click enter to highlight all of the folders and then you only have to change the color one time so once I have highlighted all of my folders I'm gonna right-click on one of them and click on change color if I needed to I could continue making subcategories inside of these folders I personally have never needed to get you know that crazy with my organization but depending on what your categories and subcategories are you may need to continue this process until you have everything as outlined as possible one idea would be to add folders for each school year inside of these subcategory folders but again you know yourself best so do what works for you now I'm gonna return to my main drive by clicking on the my drive button up at the top or on the left hand side now I'm gonna create subcategories inside of my school folder once I double-click on the school folder I'm gonna create folders for committee meetings field trips calendars staff news office forums and so on I'm gonna return to my main drive again and now I'm gonna create subcategories inside of my fourth-grade folder I'm gonna create folders for beginning of the year end of the year behavior management conference forms morning work and study hall now when it comes to my main subject area folders math and science I do like to organize them a little bit differently I do know some teachers that like to organize their subject files by either standard or by topic but personally I like to organize mine by marking period since that's the way that I teach the content let's start with my science folder once I open it up I'm gonna create folders for each marking period and then I'm also gonna create a couple of other folders for things that I have such as notes and review documents now I'm going to double click on the marking period folders and I'm gonna create a folder inside of those folders for every unit my first marking period has two units so I'm gonna create a unit one folder and a unit two folder now I couldn't take it even a step further and I could create individual folders inside of each unit for every lesson however I tried that in the past but for me it works better just to have all of the files for each unit in one folder altogether now you don't have marking periods or units you may want to organize files a little bit differently I'm just showing you what works best for me next inside of my math folder again I'm gonna create a folder for each of the four marking periods along with a folder for homework centers notes and review now let's talk about my technology folder I definitely want to have a folder for flippity and for Google classroom now if you have no idea what flippity is I highly suggest you check out my first episode of EdTech made easy which I will link for you in the description box if you use Google classroom each time you create a class you will have a file within your Google Drive to house all of those documents so I like to put all of those folders for each class into a single Google classroom folder inside of my technology folder I will be doing a future video on Google classroom so don't worry more details on that will be coming but for now just know that if you use Google classroom you want to have a Google classroom folder now that I've created all of my folders I can start adding files to them the easiest way to do this is to go directly to the folder that you want to add the file to once you're inside of that folder click on the new button and then click on file upload you will find the document wherever you haven't saved go ahead and upload it and it will place it directly inside of that folder I also thought I'd throw out a little shortcut instead of going to new and file upload you can drag a file from another window directly over into Google Drive once you let go of it it will go ahead and upload it to that folder you can also add files to your main drive and then organize them into your folders either by clicking and dragging the file into the folder or you can right click on the file click move to and then locate the folder within your drive this is a great way to organize any files you may already have in your Google Drive now that you've set up your folders now the key to keeping your Google Drive organized is to immediately put your files into a folder as soon as they go into your Drive I personally strive to not have any files in my Google Drive that are not in a folder if I ever come across a file and I can't figure out what folder to place it in that's ok I just create a new folder to house that file the key to staying organized is always having a place for everything so the same holds true for your Google Drive make sure you have a folder or a subcategory to put every single file that you keep in there now as you use your Google Drive you may have teachers share files with you which show up in these shared with me section you can either keep the files in the shared with me section or you can actually move them into your personal Google Drive so that you can then file them away into your folders in order to add a file from your shared with me into your personal Drive right-click on the file and then click on add to my Drive I personally always take the files from my shared with me section and add them to my personal drive that way I can file them away and it makes it super easy to find them when I need them there is one more section of Google Drive that I want to bring to your attention and that is the start section organizing all of your files into folders is great until you have to click on ten folders to get to the file that you need I hear you however the start section is a solution for that the start section is almost like a bookmark section these should be the files that you use most often in order to add a file to your start section locate the file right click on it and then click on add to start not only can you put files into your starred section but you also can put folders so if there is a subcategory folder that you use super often you can actually add that whole folder into your start section the great part about this is adding files or folders to your start section does not take them out of your regular drive like I said it's basically like a bookmark system I personally like to add the slides and the notes for the current unit that I'm working on in math and science to my Start section that way I can easily locate the files while I'm teaching once that unit is over I will remove those files from my Start section by right-clicking on them and then clicking on remove from starred the key is to only have a handful of files or folders in your start section because if you add everything to your start section it's not any better than your regular Drive plus the least amount of files or folders that you have in the start section the easier they will be to find I really hope that I inspired you to spend some time organizing your Google Drive if I did please go ahead and give the video a thumbs up also don't forget to share this video out with your teacher friends or your staff members I think everyone can use a little organization in their life you know what I mean continue to leave your recommendations for any future episodes of EdTech made easy down in the comments along with any questions you have about this current episode if you haven't already make sure you hit the subscribe button and the notification bell so you do not miss any future videos as always thank you for watching I love you all so much don't forget to put your pots and pants on and I will catch you in the next slide thank you so much for watching all the way to the end of this video and for supporting my youtube channel if you want to check out any of my older videos you can use the two 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Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 412,685

Rating: 4.9634714 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, organizing your files, organization tips for teachers, google drive organization, edtech made easy, educational technology, tech talk, organizing your google drive, teacher organization

Id: 8ApGLGzTT4k

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2019