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Using Google Drive with staff and students simultaneously

Lots of schools have switched to using Google Drive as their way to store files, share files with colleagues and collaborate on documents. As an admin tool, it's excellent.

Many schools also use Google Drive with their students - to share resources, give out and receive homework for example.

But is there ever a cross over? Is there a scenario whereby staff admin and student resource distribution are blurred together? Of course there is, or at least with Google Drive, there is the potential to do so. Many Google Drive users can be a little hesitant when giving out admin rights to a folder, and rightly so. Whenever you are giving lots of people edit access to a folder you always run the risk of someone making a mistake, moving files out of folders, or not completely knowing what they are doing. What makes Google Drive an excellent tool is that you can share files and folders with many people, but differentiate who has what access rights.

In the video below, we use the following scenario:
A school wants to create a folder full of GSCE revision material for this year's Y11 - so that students have access to lesson resources, slideshows, videos, revision guides etc whilst they are revising for their exams, that they can access out of school. The folder is created, and link sharing is turned on - but crucially, anyone with the link can view only. This therefore means that everything within this folder - be it individual files or sub-folders - inherits this view only access right and becomes view only, i.e people with the link can't edit or move things. This link is then the link that is given to students - be it via Google Classroom, Show My Homework, Class Dojo, or whatever digital communication the school uses. Within that folder, subject specific sub-folders are created (Maths, English, History etc) and these are still view only for anyone with the link. However (and here's where the admin cross over comes into it), each sub-folder can then be shared with specific teachers, and crucially, they are given admin rights. With admin rights, the teachers can add their files and lesson materials into their subject's sub-folder. They only have editing rights to their subject's sub-folder, so Maths teachers can only add to the Maths folder, English teachers to English folder and so on.

So within one folder, students can view everything and have access to all the materials, but can't edit anything; but teachers have edit access to specific folders so that they can fill them with their GCSE revision materials to aid revision.

In a few simple steps, we have created a revision folder for students to access and staff to contribute to. Everyone has a small piece of the puzzle so to speak, but collectively this adds to a much bigger and more efficient, effective resource for students to be able to access outside of school.

To see how we did it in more detail, you can watch the video here

To see more of our training videos, including how to set up Google Drive,  Google Classroom, Yammer and accessing our ebook library, see all of our training videos here (DRET log in required) or for more information please get in touch with the eLearning team.


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