Google Drive

Since beginning this course I have discovered many new apps and really fun and useful stuff. Some I can see have excellent potential for use in teaching and learning. One of the best so far is Google Drive. It is an online storage system and then some. You receive 15GB of storage free, but if you feel you require more then there are various plans that you can get for a monthly fee.

Google drive allows you to store documents, photos or email attachments, as you would imagine it is built to work with Google and so from within Google applications you can save easily to your Google Drive, but you can store just about any file, even Microsoft files. Your files are safe and secure until you decide to share them and then you can allow others to view, edit or comment on your files as you see fit. This would enable a group of people to work collaboratively on a project using a live document, editing and commenting as you go. Everyone with permission can then see those files.

When I created my on-line questionnaire in my blog post Using Google Forms the responses went directly to my Google Drive everytime someone completed it. They are then stored there for me to view and collate results if required. This would be really useful if you used Google Forms to create a course evaluation for your students to complete, their responses would then go straight to your Google Drive for you to reflect on. This means that all of your evaluations would be collated and stored in one place.

I am really starting to enjoy using Google Drive and exploring the possibilities that it offers. I am still learning when it comes to ICT and how it could benefit me in my teaching, but really enjoying every minute!!

Using Google Forms

The quick questionnaire above was created using Google Forms. It is so user friendly, allowing you to create questionnaires or forms, the questions that you ask can be laid out in various ways and have a choice of multiple choice, check boxes, paragraphs etc. You can even mix up the question types.





Once your form is complete, you can decide on a design or colour scheme and allow people to respond directly to you.

I can see lots of potential in using Google Forms in teaching. They would make an excellent course evaluation or critique, allowing students to reply directly to you. The forms can be embedded as I have done here in my blog. They would also be useful for establishing prior knowledge before starting a course. They could also be used as an assessment method by creating a quiz on a recent lesson and get students to complete the quiz, allowing you to establish that learning had taken place.

The results can then be saved on your Google drive, allowing to keep all the responses in one place. I really like Google forms for its ease of use and its versatility.