Control your Google Drive Files Privacy Share Settings…

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In today’s world, one often hears people focused on privacy concerns. Privacy concerns aren’t limited to the field of education. People from all walks of life are worried about maintaining privacy. Controlling your Google Drive Share Settings may help you maintain a safe cloud storage experience.

Google Drive provides some hidden share settings which support maintaining the utmost security levels. The first rule of thumb if a file, photo, or video is for “your eyes only” don’t share. Not sharing a file is the safest form of privacy. If you share a file beware of what “Public on the Web” or “Anyone with a link” means. When a file is public anyone in the world can search and find it. A file shared to anyone is open to the public too! The difference is the second method should not be searchable by search engine web crawlers. Now to learn about the some hidden share feature for securing your drive files.

Sometimes there may be a reason to share sensitive files. Google Drive files may be locked down by taking the following precautions. A file owner may prevent editors from sharing access. The file owner has control of printing, downloading, and copying. My favorite safety feature is “Set an Expiration Date.” Unfortunately for private users, the expiration feature appears only in G Suite Accounts.

Following are directions for using the above mentioned Google Drive safety features.

Prevent Editors from Sharing

  • Check Prevent Editors from Sharing
  • Click Blue Done Button

Stop Commenters & Viewers from Printing, Copying & Downloading

  • Open Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides
  • Click File to Highlight
  • Click Share
  • Click Advance
  • Check Disable Options to Download, Print and Copy for Commenter and Viewers
  • Click Blue Done Button

Set File Expiration Date

As an Educator I found this setting useful when sharing files with a long term substitute. When the school year ended the files magically disappeared from the substitutes Google Drive. I believe this is one of those worthwhile timesaving tips.

Note this Google Drive Files
Feature ONLY WORKS with G Suite Accounts

  • Open Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides
  • Click File to Highlight
  • Click Share
  • Click Advanced
  • Hover over the person’s name, click Set expiration
  • Set the Date
  • Click Save Changes
  • Click Blue Done Button

Delete Public Shared with Me File…

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Not sure how to delete a publicly shared file from the Google Drive “Shared with Me” section? Don’t fret just follow the below steps to remove the file from the shared with me section of Google Drive.

NOTE: The file will still be accessible to the owner.

Back to the Basics Using Google Forms Sections

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Sections is a Google Forms basic tool which I like using. I view a section as individual pages in a book. It allows the respondent to focus on answering a question with minimal distractions. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of a section for they also contain a powerful punch. Following is a list of advance methods for applying Google Forms Sections:

  1. Self Study Quiz
  2. Choose your Own Adventure Story
  3. Collecting Specific data depending upon an answer

Five Secrets About Google Drive, “Shared With Me”

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The Google Drive “Shared with Me” section purpose is often misunderstood. The shared with me section of Google Drive is where both public and files shared with you are stored. Do not expect to organize the shared with me section for it is NOT possible. A best practice rule I like to share is to ignore the “Shared with Me” Section of Google Drive.

First:

  • If a friend shared the file or folder & you no longer want access just remove your name from the share settings, “Who has Access”.
    • Select a file or folder
    • Click Share icon
  • In bottom right of the “Share with others” window, click Advanced
    • Next to your name, click Delete 
    • Click Done

Second:

  • If a file or folders were added as a public link your name will not appear in the “Who has Access” Listing.

Third:

  • You may delete a file or folder from the shared with me section. It will not remove the file or folder for anyone else.

Fourth:

  • A Shared with Me File or Folder may be added to the “My Drive” section of Google Drive for organizational purposes.
    • Open drive.google.com.
    • On the left, click Shared with me.
    • Select the files or folders for adding to your drive.
    • In the top right, click Add to My Drive.
    • Click Organize.
    • Choose the folder to add the file to.
    • Click Move or Move here

Fifth:

  • You can view who owns the file by using the “View Details” Panel.
    • On your computer, go to drive.google.com.
    • On the left click My Drive.
    • Click File or Folder to highlight
    • In the upper right of Drive, click Info  (I)
    • Click Detail to discover info about the owner & location of the file or folder
    • Click Activity to view who made changes to the file or folder

Creating a Scrapbook

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Photo created by Wendy Wei – No Attribute Required
https://www.pexels.com/@wendywei

A recent Colorado vacation visit with an alumni friend provided hours of enjoyment as we thumbed through old photos in a scrapbook. We focused upon conversations from High School days and special events which supported the building of a friendly community. Our conversations peddled backward to a junior high independent study program along with the positive and negative effects it had on learning. The point here is we were having fun recalling information about days gone by due to a simple technology for capturing images.

Now bring us back to the present and a Twitter Post I saw by a teacher who was sharing a group activity presentation created by her students. I then realized how capturing these moments with the newest virtually reality tools may reinforce the embedding of learning activities into our memories. Students may create a classroom scrapbook of learning events using Google’s Tour Creator VR. Google Tour Creator provides some basic template tours covering multiple content areas or let your students use their imagination and create a tour from scratch.

The following list is of a couple of easy to use Google tools to get started with unlocking students creative juices using AR and VR.