WWPS Technology

Add Shared Documents to My Drive Since Google has made the switch to the "New Drive" users have struggled with shared documents. It is difficult to search for documents in the "Shared with Me" portion of Google Drive. Don't fret because there are some easy solutions to getting documents that are shared with you into your Drive so they can be easily searched. In our district people usually share a document or folder using the email notification option in Drive. Often a shared document or folder will look like the screenshot below. Once you've opened the folder it allows you access to documents, but sometimes the documents behave as if they are in view mode.  Recently when I open a shared folder the documents were displayed in the following manner. Clicking on the document allowed me to access the information from items that are shared with me, but I often struggled to locate the document in the future.  We have over 3/4 of a millio...

gScholar & Google Drive gScholar is a fantastic tool for the 1:1 classroom. It provides teachers and students and easy, convenient mechanism to share Google docs. gScholar is connected directly to Google Drive, and it's important that teachers and students learn how to maneuver in Google Drive. I find the new look in Google Drive the easiest way to manage documents in Google Drive & gScholar. The short video below explains how to switch Google Drive to the "New Drive". Once teachers and students switch over to the "New Drive" they can begin to make changes to their gScholar folders to better suit their needs. First let's take a look at gScholar and Google Drive from the teacher's perspective. The video clip below illustrates where teachers can find their gScholar folders, and how to change each folder to meet their needs. Teachers can make changes to ensure that gScholar is easier for them to use, and accessible in their Google...

The WWPS has been steadily moving to a completely cloud environment over the last three years. Three years ago we moved away from our Windows Exchange server environment, and implemented Google Applications for Education or GAFE for our faculty and staff. We piloted student accounts at all three levels (elementary, middle & HS) two years ago, and finally added student Google accounts for every student K-12 during the 2012-2013 school year.  Recently we made the commitment to move to a Chromebook environment for all of our students, and most of the staff. The district is also making a commitment to reduce the number of file servers that we support. It takes a lot of resources (time, money and IT staff intervention) to keep our file servers running. Most of our servers are older than our 4th graders, and we don't have the resources to replace them. It only makes sense for us to move network files into the cloud. I've completely moved all of my files into Google Drive for mo...