Google Team Shared Drive

Shared Drive Resources

Purpose of Shared Drive

  • The content within a team drive is not owned by a single person

    • People coming and going can be added and removed easily

  • It can be more organized than “My Drive”

    • “Shared with me” can become a dumping ground that is able to organize

  • Team drives are great for collaborating WITHIN the team.

    • If you are sharing things outside of the team, those files are not easily organized by people outside of the team.

  • Great space for templates!

    • Make a copy from a team drive and make your own.

  • It creates a private space that can be accessed from anywhere:

    • Change permissions on a doc when you are ready to share

Our recommendations for using Google Shared Drives:

  • Where appropriate, be very specific when naming drives to indicate purpose - ex. project names

    • Naming conventions

  • Could be used to create by few(ILT for example) and shared school wide with view

    • Small Audience (committee) shared transparently with view access

  • Use case: School-wide/team-wide templates

    • Storage of school sites

  • Use cases: planning sandbox for a team, project management space, repository for documents that might need to be updated that are linked on webpages (currently must be copied, eventually can be organized), sharing resources by inviting view only users.

  • Plan for who will be a member and what level you want them to have. Remember that documents can have different permissions if needed.

    • Utilize GROUPS!!!

  • Check on the membership of your team drive before the end of the year and beginning of the year so that you know who is in there.

  • Small groups who work together regularly (ie, content teams at a school, grade level teams)

  • Schools: use as a place to house school-wide documents that everyone needs to access but not make changes to them. Examples: testing schedule, items from handbook, field trip info, etc.

  • School Grade or Content Level Teams: use as a place to keep collaborative notes, lesson plans, and resources. If a teacher wants to personalize for their class, they can make a copy and change it

  • What is the ultimate goal with the resources you are creating and sharing? If it is wider audiences/public use, Team Drives may not be the place. Team Drives are better for organizing work specific to a team.

  • Suggestion: Build a Google Group first. Then invite the group to the drive as view only. Can change permissions for those who need full or edit access