Google drive and Read It

Posted on June 2, 2013 Updated on June 2, 2013

This is going to be an odd article, it’s sort of three in one, but all things mentioned I think you may find useful. It all starts with an article that I read by Daniel Edwards on Read.It! (Not sure if it’s pronounced ‘red it’ or ‘reed it’, either way it is a useful and interesting application). Firstly, Read.It! is an Internet based magazine where experts can post articles about your favourite interests which you can follow via an App (I believe the iPhone version is called Scoop.it! Or it may have changed names). It has been a good source to find resources and ideas for using new technology in the classroom and I highly recommend it. So, part one done.

Part two, on Read.It!, writers ‘curate’ topics (group similar articles together) which you can follow and you’ll be updated when new articles are written by a given writer. One particular writer I’d like to introduce to you is Daniel Edwards, his curated topics tend to focus on new technology in the classroom and I’ve found the following article (click here) particularly interesting.

Now, during my PGCE, I used to use a USB stick, which often I’d leave in the staff room, or at home, meaning that the hours of preparation carried out the day (…evening) before almost a waste of time. Google drives solves the problem of my particular case of absentmindedness and can make your life easier too. All you need is a google account and you have access to 15gb of free cloud (online) disk space (I pay £2/3 a month and get up to 25gb and there is more that you can pay for should you wish). All you need do when a resource is created is log on to google drive and save your work. You can also create folders, I have one for each class, CPD, my form etc just to ate things easier to store.

However, what makes things even easier is that you are able to download a google drive folder onto your computer where all of your work is saved offline and then synced automatically into the google drive cloud when linked to the internet (which I believe, but yet to test as I’m waiting for the go ahead to download a google drive folder onto my work laptop, that you can have a folder at work and thus would be synced when connected to that same folder on your home PC).

For 7-step explanation of how to use google drive, take a look at this article by Chris Hoffman (click link) and never be caught out by missing USB sticks ever again.