Unit 4: Share and Collaborate
Unit Objectives:
- Learners will be able to share files, set access levels and visibility.
- Learners will be able to view Drive activity.
- Learners will be able to collaborate with others to work together on the same file.
Share files, Access levels and Visibility
Google Drive lets you share files with others. You can share any file in your drive that belongs to you or any file that's share with you that you can edit. In your Drive you will have files that fall into one of the four categories below:
- Files that you want to keep private. You want no one to see these files.
- Files that you want to share with others for them to view but not make changes to them. For example, newsletters, notices or any file the printout of which you would display on a notice board.
- Files that you share with others for them to edit. For example, if you and your friend are working on a newsletter with each of you making edits and sharing viewpoints. You create the file and share the file with your friend, providing them with access to edit the file.
- Files others have shared with you either to view or make edits.
The Share with others box shown below will appear when you click any of the share options discussed above.
In cases where you do not want to enter the names of people on Google or email addresses of people who do not have a Google account, you can choose to share your file by choosing the option Get shareable link. For example, you are doing a potluck and you have invited 20 people, you create Google sheets so that all your invitees can edit the sheet to enter what they are bringing to the potluck. You will copy the link of your file and paste it into the invitation with access level Anyone with link can edit.
View Drive Activity
When you share files providing edit access level to others, or when someone has shared a file with you providing you with edit access level you might want to keep track of who made changes to the shared file and when the changes were made.
To track changes made to files in your Google Drive, select the file and click on View details in the options bar. A pane appears to the right of the viewing pane displaying two tabs. The first Display, which shows a preview of the file and file related properties for example, type, size, storage used etc. The second Activity, which shows who performed what activity and when.
Refer to the image below to see where you can find View details and the pane you see when click on View details..
Work Collaboratively with Others
One of the reasons why you should use Google Drive is that it is perfect for collaboration. Many users can work on the same document, insert comments in the margins, or just let team members take a peek at what they are working on from any location on the globe. Lets consider this example where you want to collaborate with other teachers on the final project guidelines for the course that you all teach in different sections. So you create the project guidelines document and share the document with two other teachers giving then edit access. You want the collaborating teachers to insert their input, make suggestions, insert comments and so on. The video below explains how your Google doc will look when all of you work on the document at the same time and it also explains the various options of working together on the same document.
Check Your Understanding
Click on this link here to check your understanding before proceeding to next section.
GETTING STARTED
UPLOAD AND STORE
ORGANIZE AND SEARCH
SHARE AND COLLABORATE
Back to Wiki click here
UPLOAD AND STORE
ORGANIZE AND SEARCH
SHARE AND COLLABORATE
Back to Wiki click here