This is a short video from teachers and principles about their use of google docs. This gives an overview of how teachers are using it, how students are using it and how collaboration can work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYPjJK6LZdM
(4 Minutes)
Creating a Google account
To create a Google Account, just visit the account creation page,
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?hl=en
• Enter your current email address and choose a password, make sure you can remember it!
• Once you've finished registering, you'll receive a verification email. Just click the link in that email to complete the verification process.
Video of the account setup process can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjTQt3Th85U
It's a unified sign-in system that gives you access to a variety of Google products, including Google Docs, Blogspot, iGoogle, Web History, Picasa and many more.
When creating an account, please keep the following in mind:
* Your Google Account username should be an email address from which you currently send and receive mail, unless you'd prefer to sign up for Google Mail.
* Your password should be at least eight characters long and can't be a commonly used word. Please select a unique combination of letters and numbers.
* In the Word Verification section, you'll need to type the wavy characters exactly as they appear in the picture.
* Creating a Google Account doesn't give you Google Mail. However, you can sign up for Google Mail by visiting the Google Mail homepage and clicking the Sign up for Google Mail link under the sign-in box. If you're interested in learning more about Google Mail, please visit the About Google Mail page.
Signing up for a Google Docs account
To sign up for Google Docs, just go to http://docs.google.com. If you don't already have a Google Account, click Get Started to sign up for one.
Setting up Google docs to work offline
Once you have goggle docs setup you can enable the account to be usable offline. This is a great tool which removes the requirement for internet access by all contributors (as long as they have it at some stage) and allows them to still contribute to a document. Information entered offline will then sync / update when the user next logs into Google docs online.
Video about Google docs offline
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cyHYEfpRVA
Starting your first document
Near the top left corner of the Google Docs home page there is a tool bar with New, Upload, Share, Move to Hide etc.
Click on ‘New’ and move down to ‘Document’. This will setup a blank document for you to start working on.
Another option is to use the ‘Upload’ tab to put a file you have created in Microsoft word into a Google Doc. You will have to browse for the file and then Google will go through the upload process.
Sorting your files into folders including different colours
Now that you have some documents setup you will soon find it will get difficult as more and more pages are added to your home page. There is an easy way to sort the muddle, make folders. Google docs has the ability to organise files into specific folders with a tagged colours.
From your Google Docs Home page click on the New tab and go down to ‘Folder’. This will setup a new folder which you can then name and chose a colour for. Return to your Google home screen (click on ‘All Items’ if needed)
Now you can simply drag your files from the right into a folder on the left.
From now on if you only want to see particular files like ‘Planning’ you just click the Planning folder for those specific folders to show up.
Sharing you documents
There are a few options for sharing which can be changed at anytime. On the Google Docs home page (or in one of your folders) put a tick in the box next to your document.
Next look above on the tool bar and click ‘Share’.
The next screen will ask you to add users email addresses that you want to share with and any notes you want for the invitation.
You can also set the access options so the person can view only, contribute/alter.
Once you confirm the invitation an email will be sent to the person you want to share/contribute to the document.
