Google Driving: General Resources for Exploration

A recent faculty meeting really showed me how interested our teachers are in exploring the features of Google Drive and Apps. When given the freedom to choose between one of six ed tech topics to explore for an hour, an overwhelming majority of my colleagues flooded the "Google Drive" area of the library, inundating my few "experts" who were there to help people. A few others jumped in to assist their colleagues and if I understand correctly (I didn't really get to check in; I was leading a small group exploring Twitter for professional development), people really made progress in learning about this Google cloud thing that's all the rage.

However, I know some people will need reminders and tutorials, so I want to share some of my favorites here.  Whether revisiting how to share a Google doc or moving on to creating forms and analyzing the responses from them, we all need step-by-step instructions or visual help sometimes. So here are some favorites to get you started:

• Google Drive Help Center: That's right - they make the tools, so they better make some good resources to accompany them.  I usually find anything Google to be user-friendly, including these resources.  This link will take you to the main menu, but each topic takes you to a sub-menu, which then takes you to another menu; very specific help here.
  

• GCFLearnFree Google Documents: From the Goodwill Community Foundation's LearnFree program (a non-profit providing educational materials to help people around the world "learn the essential skills they need to live and work in the 21st century", the lessons/tutorials provided here are clear and easy to follow... and include quizzes. We won't talk about my score on the Google Drive quiz that I thought I could just breeze through - I didn't think about the questions enough at all and almost failed it.

• AnsonAlex YouTube Tutorials: This playlist contains a number of tutorials for those of us who are more visual and auditory learners.

Have a Google Drive/Apps tutorial that really helped you? Share it in the comments below!