Good morning! Today I'm going to share with you how I keep all of my school, TPT, and blogging files organized and easy to access whether I'm on my school computer or my home computer. There are many instances when I want to open a file at school that I created at home and Google Drive lets me do that in a couple easy clicks without having to carry any extra equipment with me. Google Drive and I are pretty much BFF's. It makes everything so easy and gives you 15gb of free space which I've found is a lot to fill up. I have ALL of my clipart, school files, blog files, and more on there. I hardly ever save anything to my actual computer.
If you're already a Google Drive user, then simply sign in to the website. If you're not a Google user, sign up! Once you're signed in to Google Drive, you'll notice in the lower left-hand corner it says, "Install Drive for your computer," - click that. This is where the magic happens!
After Google Drive has installed on your computer you'll notice the little icon for it in the toolbar at the top of your computer. Whenever you need to access your files, simply click on the icon.
When I open my Google Drive icon my files come up. I have my files separated into categories for my blog, TPT, school, clipart, etc. This makes it really easy to access what I want quickly. (Originally it took a bit to put everything in to folders, but it was so worth the time!).
When I open my school folder, I have the files organized by subject or month. If I'm looking for something I teach in August, it's filed under the August folder. If I need an award it's located in the Awards folder.
When I'm creating projects for my classroom or products for TPT and I want to use clipart, I open the folder titled Clipart back on my main Google Drive screen. I have my clipart separated by the creator's name. This helps me get to know my clipart and the creators of the clipart so that I can give them proper credit. My go-to person for clipart is Creative Clips, so this is usually where I'm clicking 95% of the time.
Once I click on a creator of clipart, the menu opens up to more folders with categories. If I know I'm making something reading related, I might click on the cute set, "Reading Buddies."
Finally, it brings up the clipart in that category and I can easily select which image I want.
What I love about storing my files this way is that I don't have to think! If I create something new or update an existing file I just make sure to save it to Google Drive and it does all of the hard work for me. When I get to school and click on the same Google Drive icon on my laptop (make sure to install that icon on each computer), all of my files are ready to go. No more wondering if you saved the latest version of a file to a thumb drive or which computer the file is located on.
Easy and organized!
Do you use Google Drive? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Make sure to check back in tomorrow for my What I'm Loving Wednesday linky!
Great post! I'm always looking for ideas to stay organized! It's not something that comes very naturally to me :) Thanks for sharing your expertise!
ReplyDeleteGoogle Drive is my lifesaver!! I use it just like you do with labeled folders and categories for personal, school, scouts, etc. So easy! Thanks for the tips!
ReplyDelete