Google Apps "shared" drive

[caffrey]

Is it possible to create a shared drive in google apps ? I'd like to create a drive for a curriculum set eg Maths department and share that up with the members of the Maths department so they have a shared resource.

I tried doing it by creating a user called maths but doesn't really work like I thought it would (Have to log into the account and create the shares etc.)

 

Anyone else come up with a solution for this ? Or do I need to stop thinking like windows and start thinking like google ?

[CyberNerd]

Or do I need to stop thinking like windows and start thinking like google ?

 

I think it requires a slight change of mindset.

Sharing files is one of the things Google apps does much better than windows shares; but the control is much more in the hands of the teacher rather than the administrator.

[caffrey]

I think so too, just one of the complaints I have received is that the "shared with me" starts to look messy once there's a lot of shared stuff in there (Not just curriculum items).

Other reason I was thinking of this was to allow the group to have more space, instead of using their own space for curriculum documents, also a bit of pain if someone leaves (I am aware you can copy docs to another user upon deletion of an account).

[CyberNerd]

I think the best way of doing it is to have a group "teachers of maths" and make sure the staff share their folders with the group.

staff seem to forget that they have to organise the folders (as they do in windows) and also forget that Google is rather good at searching their drive.

 

I change ownership of all of the documents of a teacher who leaves to their line manager.

[caffrey]

Existing system is pretty messy in windows anyway (Lots of duplicates) So I expect little change with google Thanks for the pointers

[rdk]

Why not create an account an account "curriculum". Inside that account create a folder for each curriculum area. Share that folder with each appropriate curriculum area leader. Then the maths curriculum leader (for example) can share that folder with the people in their department. When a maths teacher (for example) creates or uploads a file to the maths shared folder, the sharing settings are maintained so that everyone has access to the document.

 

An idea would be that anyone who creates a file within the shared folder change ownership of the file to "curriculum" so that it doesn't matter if anyone leaves.

 

Working this way requires a couple of things (in my experience):

1) the curriculum area leader has to know what they are doing

2) staff have to let go of the "its mine but I'm sharing" mentality so that creating a document but changing ownership to curriculum recognises that the school owns documents people create at school

3) requires discipline from the curriculum area leader ensuring that their folder structure is maintained logically, and they insist ownership of resources added is changed to curriculum.

 

Instead of an overall curriculum account you could do the same thing with individual faculty accounts - that's the way we do it but if we had our time over I'd do it the way described above.

[rdk]

Forgot to add to above that users need to create a file structure within "mydrive". Any folders shared with them can be dragged directly into mydrive, and then basically "shared with me" can be ignored.

[caffrey]

That's pretty much what I tried first, I created an OU called curriculum, then created a "department aka user" called maths. I had to log into this account to create a folder then share it with the department (Seems to be no other ways to create folders unless you log into the account).

One thing I wasn't clear of was if you drag a folder from "shared with me" into "mydrive" is that a link to the other folder, or is it a copy in their folder e.g. whose space is it taking up.

[rdk]

or is it a copy in their folder e.g. whose space is it taking up.

 

Whenever anything is shared there is never a copy of anything - there is one instance of the file and all the shared versions, whatever folder they are in, are just pointers to that file. If the documents are in google doc format they don't take up any space - the number of such files is effectively unlimited.

 

If you are using the drive folders as effectively online storage for Word docs or pdfs then there is a size limitation, but currently 30 gb per user so that's effectively limitless as well - just create another user in the unlikely event the space was filled.

 

To create folder without logging into another account, create the folder in your account, share it with whoever needs the folder, then change owner to "curriculum" or "maths" or whoever.

[caffrey]

I didn't think of that folder thing at all, great idea! - I'll give that a go

[rdk]

Why not create an account an account "curriculum". Inside that account create a folder for each curriculum area. Share that folder with each appropriate curriculum area leader. Then the maths curriculum leader (for example) can share that folder with the people in their department. When a maths teacher (for example) creates or uploads a file to the maths shared folder, the sharing settings are maintained so that everyone has access to the document.

 

An idea would be that anyone who creates a file within the shared folder change ownership of the file to "curriculum" so that it doesn't matter if anyone leaves.....

 

Instead of an overall curriculum account you could do the same thing with individual faculty accounts - that's the way we do it but if we had our time over I'd do it the way described above.

 

I've been thinking about this answer I gave - especially about creating a curriculum drive instead of individual faculty drives. If there was a curriculum drive, with shared folders within for each faculty, it would mean only the "curriculum" account could delete files. This probably wouldn't work - so faculty accounts would be the way to go, with the faculty leader having access to the folder to maintain resources etc.

[caffrey]

Plan was to create a Curriculum OU and have "users" aka departments under it, so makes it easier for me to add a exception in google sync. e.g.

 

Curriculum

-------Maths

-------MFL

 

etc.

 

Next issue I have is issuing coursework to a group of students that the teacher can see, but I think this is a case of the teacher emailing them getting them to save to their drives and sharing it with the teacher. To be fair the original windows solution wasn't too good either.

[CyberNerd]

Next issue I have is issuing coursework to a group of students that the teacher can see, but I think this is a case of the teacher emailing them getting them to save to their drives and sharing it with the teacher. To be fair the original windows solution wasn't too good either.

 

We have staff share everything (relevant to students) with the whole school, but not email it.

They can then link to the files in Moodle as Moodle has good integration with GAPPS.

[jmak]

For sharing coursework with students, take a look at doctopus, a script running on google docs. I've played with someone else's (stop sniggering) and it was awesome. I will get round to implementing it myself soon. Edited September 8, 2013 by jmak

[NotSoFast]

Just looked at Doctopus. It looks fantastic! Game changer for me - it *could* signal the end of a separate VLE.

[rdk]

Look also at Hapara Teacher Dashboard - easy for teachers to manage classes, work submissions, giving copies of documents etc. We've just started using it in the last couple of months and teachers love it.

[caffrey]

Thanks everyone, the main problem and question I get asked is about controlled assessments, e.g. bulk change permissions to edit at the start of the lesson then read only at the end and how to structure it all (by student name / curriculum shared with the teacher etc.) Trying not to rely on 3rd party (mainly for costs) but it's hard enough just to teach the teachers how to use gapps

 

*edit* that doctopus looks pretty good

Edited September 9, 2013 by caffrey