Rock Creek Elementary

1. From home, go to the Google Gmail webpage and open a new Gmail account or click on "Sign In with a different account" if you already have different Google accounts open. At school open the Google Chrome browser (not Safari, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox). Google Drive works better in the Google Chrome browser environment.
   
   
2. Log in as shown at school (no capital letters, no spaces, dot between names, etc.)
   
   
3. Click on the APPS Icon (9 tiny squares, 3 rows of 3, located upper right area of screen)
   
   
4. Click on the Google Drive icon.
   
   
5. Create folders to keep your drive organized. Suggestions: PERSONAL folder, several SHARED-(TEACHER NAME) folders as needed, WRITING, SPORTS, IMAGES, TECHNOLOGY, etc. Right-click and color each folder. Right-click and "share" certain folders with each teacher so that each teacher can see your school work as needed.
   
   
6. Be sure to name your documents correctly at the upper left hand corner so that you can easily SEARCH for documents in the future.
   
   
7. NO NEED TO SAVE YOUR WORK! With each change you make in any Google app/doc, Google Chrome saves your work.
   
   
8. Remember to look at your tabs to see what is open. If you happen to open several tabs of Google Drive, just x out of the extra tabs. You only need one.
   
   
9. While in an application like presentation or document, research from TOOLS > RESEARCH (dialogue box on the right) to conveniently add images and/or footnote/cite to your document.
   
   
10. To log out of Google Chrome: If you are on a public computer, be sure to 3 lines out of the computer  ("delete this user" under settings/users) to completely remove your profile from that computer. Doing this will not delete everything you've saved in your login; just your profile will be deleted. If you are on a home computer where other members use this same computer, you can initially click on "add account"  when logging in - - which is adding an additional account to the same computer and then "sign out" when it's time to go. In this case, sign out is located under your name at the top right area of the screen.
    

Very user friendly, the apps and tools are similar to MS Office, and much more simple and easy to use. But just like everything else, Google Chrome takes some getting used to. f you don't know how to do something in Google Chrome, refer to the videos above, research Google on how to do something using keywords, and/or play with it until you understand it!