Google Drive for Busy Teachers

It was almost 4 years ago that I began my master’s program and started teaching at an amazing English department in addition to continuing my other part time job. It was then that I realized my organizational skills needed help.

I had to work with various LMS (Learning Management Systems) such as Moodle, Blackboard, Desire to Learn at school and at work. In addition to creating lesson plans, marking, doing research, attending meetings, and collaborating with colleagues for projects, I had to make sure that I delivered to the best of my ability in an effective and efficient manner.

Carrying a USB to different classrooms and making sure that I had a backup on all my data was one additional layer to my daily dose of stress. This was when Google Drive was introduced to me. To be clear, I did have experience using various online spaces before, but this was different. I realized that this space, Google Drive, is connected to my email, my calendar, and my blog, PowerPoint presentations, Word Files, and Excel Sheets. Unbelievable. No more stressing about forgetting my USB, worrying about space, making backups, adding new research information, data, tests, and activities.

One of the first factors that got me hooked on this platform is how easily I can create folders. Another benefit is how convenient it is to create Power Point presentations and share the PowerPoints (Google-Slides) through a link.

Finally, using Google Drive allows users to create Google Docs (blog about this soon to come), share documents with peers, edit documents, and practice peer editing. These documents can all be created anywhere on your Google Drive space by a simple right click. In addition, “unlike a traditional word processing document, you never need to click “Save”…EVER.  Your work is automatically saved every 5 seconds (Lynch, 2016, para. 2).

My teaching life changed once I started using this amazing tool, and I cannot imagine how I used to teach before incorporating it into my daily teaching and learning practice. Using Google Drive has made me a more efficient educator in developing and sharing resources. “Simply put, Google Docs is like an online version of the Microsoft Word suite, but it’s free and has real-time sharing and collaborating abilities (Moitzheim, 2015, para.2).

Have you found Google Drive a useful tool? Please share with us your helpful ideas and tips.

References

M Lynch (2016, December 8). Teachers: How to Use Google Drive. Retrieved from     https://www.theedadvocate.org/teachers-how-to-use-google-drive-2/

D Moitzheim (2015, September 5). Teaching with Google Drive. Retrieved from http://teachmag.com/archives/8545

Sherry Hejazi

Hi everyone! My name is Sherry, and I have been teaching adult learners for the past 18 years. I am an OCT certified teacher with a master’s degree in Education. I teach English, ESL, OSLT, research and report writing courses at a post-secondary level of education. As an educator, I am passionate about incorporating diverse instructional strategies that would benefit students with various learning abilities. I am also passionate about research and implementing various ED-Tech tools in developing and instructing various courses. I am very glad to be a part of the TESL Blog team.