How to Search Gmail and Drive

Great tutorial!  Had to feature this!

Google Gooru

If you have not already, I highly recommend Google Gooru as a valuable resource for learning to make the most of your Google Apps - Gmail, Drive, Calendar, etc.  I subscribe to their newsletter and I am always finding useful, relevant tutorials and helps.

Here is an article they posted today that I found very useful.

4 Things You Can Do Right Now To Create A Perfectly Organized Google Drive


Check them out today.

Google App Launcher

Did you know you can go straight to your Docs/Sheets/Slides from the App launcher? Here's how: http://t.co/YqVhR5nQO8 pic.twitter.com/fd8O1FhI0a

— Google Docs (@googledocs) March 19, 2015

Start Your Google Classroom

Just in case I haven't mentioned this enough, Google Classroom is a product that came out this past fall.  It is not so much a "new product" as it is a nicely put together LMS (learning management system) that combines what Gmail, Drive and Calendar do into one easy to use communication device.  I am hearing teachers starting to use this in their own classroom environments more and more now.  Many teachers are choosing to try it on a smaller, easy to run class until they become more comfortable with it.  Though Google Classroom may not necessarily be "loaded" full of digital tools, it's simplicity and practicality make it a very valuable tool for communicating with your classroom digitally.  If you are flipping your classroom, this will come in very handy.

I couldn't give it a better description or do a better demo of Google Classroom than Google themselves, so preview the video below.  No need to worry whether there is enough help online in using Google Classroom; just search for it in YouTube.  There have already been hundreds of teachers sharing their view and experience of Google Classroom

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Recent Changes in Google Forms

If you have not introduced yourself to Google Forms, you are missing out on a very handy feature of your Google Drive.  Google Forms is a part of your Google Docs suite.  Create a Google Form for quizzes, survey, gathering information, getting a better understanding of a group of people, and many other creative uses.  And because it is part of our GAFE (Google Apps for Education) domain, it is so easy to share with students and staff.

Recently Google has been doing some upgrading with Forms and have added some great new features, like Add Ons.  Below are links to Google Drive's blog describing some of these great new changes with Forms, making Forms much more inviting to use.

• Your Forms, your way
• A few more ways to make Forms you own
• Add ons for Forms bring a little something extra to your surveys

Learning Google Apps?

Here are some of great collections of small, bite-sized video tutorials on making the most of Google Apps - like Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Forms, etc.  These collections of video are set in a YouTube Playlist for easy watching.  These videos should be very helpful for you, especially if you are still learning the basics.

Simply click on the Playlist drop down menu in each Playlist collections below and select videos from the list.

Google Documents Playlist

Google Drive Playlist

Google Calendar Playlist

Gmail Playlist

To see more playlists regarding Google Apps please visit +Sam Rosenfeld YouTube channel.  Thanks to Sam for the work in putting this together.