Google Forms: Digital Assignment Tracking

You can use a Google Form to easily keep track of the turn-in rate of homework or other student assignments.  Make the first question the name of the assignment for easy sorting.  As the second question, use a multiple choice grid with each row being a student name and each column being a turn-in status.  You can even make it a required question so that you force yourself to never skip a student.

This type of form could also be used to take a quick snapshot of student mastery or progress on a particular skill.  The first question would be used to identify the skill or subject you are assessing.  For the second question, the multiple choice grid, you would use the rows again as student names, but make the columns be progress indicators - struggling, emergent, proficient, mastered, etc.

Make this even better by using the add-on for Sheets called Row Call.  This could put the responses for each unique topic or subject into their own tab in the spreadsheet for a more organized view of the responses.

I always mark the option to provide a link to submit another response, so after I submit, I’m ready for the next assignment or topic.

Thank you to Kyra Bowers (@KyraBowers) for sharing this idea with me!

What to ask?

• Assignment name, Topic, or Skill
• Multiple Choice Grid with student names as rows and assessment criteria as the columns. 

If you'd like to copy a sample form to make it your own - click here. 

Here is what this form could look like:

Google Forms: Anecdotal Student Notes

I have tried all kinds of ways to take anecdotal notes.  Spiral notebooks, 3x5 cards, Evernote, Google Docs with a table of contents, you name it, I’ve tried it.  Nothing was just what I was looking for.  I wanted something easily accessible, private while I’m taking notes, organized, and not something that someone can find lying around my desk.  Then it dawned on me - Google Forms!

I made a form that I use over and over again to take notes on students and it puts all the information into a sortable, searchable spreadsheet in my Drive.  I can sort by date, subject, or student.  Perfect!

I always mark the option to provide a link to submit another response, so after I submit, I’m ready for the next student.

What to ask?

• Student Name - you can always enter your students in ahead of time so you just pick them from a dropdown menu.  Saves time!
• Date
• Subject
• Leave a field for comments

If you want to get fancy - you can use an add-on for Google Sheets called rowCall to make a separate tab in your spreadsheet for each child.  This means you will have every note for Tommy in one tab, every note for Suzie in another tab, etc.  Try it - it's amazing!  If you do this, I recommend using a dropdown for student names instead of typing them in each time to make sure you always put their names in the same way.  This will allow rowCall to do its magic correctly each time.

Here is what my form looks like:

If you'd like a copy of this form so you can make it your own - click here.

Gmail: Using the Star

That little star next to your emails in the inbox can be a useful tool.  It can remind you of things to follow up on.  It can also help you mark emails you don't want to lose track of.  With a little tweak to your settings, it can help you do a whole lot more.

The basic way to use the star to mark an email is to just click on the star.  That will make it turn yellow.

 Now when you click on the "Starred" section in the navigation down the left of your inbox screen, you will see all of the emails you have starred.  ​

To remove a star from an email, simply click the star icon again.  There are a few more options available for stars if you go into your settings.  Click on the gear icon at the top right of your inbox and choose "Settings".

​Now scroll down until you see the section for "Stars".

You can see that you have quite a few more options.  Chances are you have just one star in use.  If you click on the "4 stars" preset, it will look like this:

​You can also choose to use "all stars" or simply click on the ones you'd like to use and drag them into the "in use" section.

Once you decide what you'd like, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save changes".  If you chose to have more than one star, you can now click the little star icon for an email and it will be the yellow star, but if you click it again it will change and each click allows you to "scroll" through the star icons you have in play.  Once you set the icon and click away to something else, when you click the icon again it will remove the star from the email.

Stars can be a great way to add a layer of organization to your inbox.

Thanks for stopping by.  Come back again soon for more handy tech tips!

Google Keep

Are you one of those people who have sticky notes and lists littering your desk?  I was - until I found Google Keep.  Access to my sticky notes whenever, where ever, no matter what device I'm using.  You can make to do lists, set reminders, add pictures, and change the color of your notes.

To get started, be sure you are logged in with the Google Account you want to use, and browse to keep.google.com.  There will be some notes already there giving you some information about what you can do with Keep.  You can delete them when you are ready and replace them with your own notes.  Here is a picture of what my Keep looks like at the moment:

To add a new note, simply click on "Add note" in the white bar near the top.  If you know you want a list, you can click on the little list icon on the right side of the bar.  If you know you want a picture note, click the picture icon.  

Once you begin editing your note - you will have several different options.  

You can get reminders about your note, share it with others, change the background color, add an image to your note, or archive it (not delete it, but get it off the screen until you need it again).  

If you click on the three little dots to see more options, you can delete the note, add a label (for tracking your notes easier), make a copy of the note, choose to have checkboxes for a little list, or even copy to a Google Doc (the copy to Doc option will only show up once you have typed in some text). 

I love the "Copy to a Google Doc" option because if I start a list or some brainstorming on a note, I can click that and it will create a Google Doc with the text and/or photo that was in my note and it gives the document the same title as the note.  Pretty handy!

On the upper left hand side of your screen, you can click on the little menu to see a few more options. 

You are already on the "Notes" page.  You can click to see your reminders, filter notes by labels, see what you have Archived or even what you have deleted.  Under settings you can enable sharing of notes.  

Take a moment and check it out.  If you like it, you just might be able to get rid of the crazy sticky note parade.

Assignment Dropbox using Google Forms

Once student assignments started going digital, I was thrilled.  I no longer had to carry 25 writer's notebooks, book reports, essays, or poster projects home and back again for grading.  It seemed I would be much more organized without much effort.  That was mostly true.  Having many of our assignments go digital was great.  I could access the files from home or wherever else I wanted without carrying large amounts of paper around.  However, there did seem to be a bit of a hassle in finding all the flies.  I had to set up a plethora of folders in Google Drive and set up all the sharing rights.  Maybe I chose to just have students share files with me instead, so I had to dig through copious amounts of shared files to find the ones I needed.  While both of those ways can work, and can work well, I was looking for something a little different.  Tools like Google Classroom can make this process easier, but not every assignment is something that can be saved in a Google Drive.  What if it is just a link?  Do I have the students email me each link?  What if your students don’t have email?  That can be a hassle at times also.  I was still mulling this all over when a presenter I had at a Google Summit event solved my problem.  Sergio Villegas introduced me to the assignment dropbox using Google Forms.

I'm very excited to let you know that Sergio is co-authoring this blog post about his assignment dropbox.  The form that Sergio uses is geared more toward older students, so I made some modifications to it before I used it with my third graders.  I'll tell you a bit about the form I created and how I use it in my classroom, and then I'll turn it over to Sergio who will speak about it from a high school perspective.

I created a very simple Google Form to use as my dropbox.  If you aren't familiar with creating a Google Form, you may want to check out my Google Forms 101 post.  I have only 4 questions on the form.  Student name, assignment title, what action they want me to take regarding their assignment, and a place for them to paste a link for an assignment that is not a Google Doc.

You may want to have them paste in links for all assignments, but I chose not to.  We use Hapara Teacher Dashboard, which allows me full access to my students' Google Drives from one screen.  I can go in and easily view student work and it is automatically shared with me when I click on it through this system.  Instead of having my students share the documents and then paste in the links, I just go and grab their file from my Teacher Dashboard.  You'll have to decide what works best for you when you make your assignment dropbox.

I only have one class and this year I don’t have any students with the same first name, so I only have them type in their first name for the “Name” prompt.  You can require last name or last initial if your situation requires that.  Sergio also mentioned to me that a great option for younger students is to create a drop down menu with all the student's names so they can just pick their name instead of typing it.  This can also help save time typing if your students are working on iPads or other tablet devices.

You'll also notice that I used a drop down menu for assignment name.  Some like to use multiple choice for this instead.  I just like the way that the drop down looks.  You can pick whichever you like best.

My students know that when they finish their assignment, they need to "turn it in" by going to this form.  The link never changes, even when I go in to change the assignment titles as we move through the year.  I post the link on my class website and they know exactly where to go, every time.

By requiring the students to use this form, I now have a spreadsheet in my Google Drive that tells me who is finished with which assignment and what they need me to do with it.  It also helps me to respect their time, because I grade them in the order they were turned in.  I color code my rows once I look at them, so I know if they are working on corrections, needed to start over, need a face to face conference, etc.  You can also use conditional formatting on your Google spreadsheet to have it color code some things for you.  I'll have instructions coming for that in a later blog post.  For instance, all assignments that are marked final draft, get colored red automatically.

The blank column you see is where their names go.  I hid them before I took the screenshot for privacy reasons.  The column all the way to the right would be where the links would show up when they paste them in, but I hid those for privacy reasons as well.  

Even my young students got the hang of this very easily at the beginning of the year.  It has been a really great tool to help me streamline the process of grading digital work.  I can only imagine how much easier it makes things when you have older students turning in a variety of digital assignments.  Sergio can speak to that from his perspective.

Hi all, Sergio here, since Cynthia did a solid job building up the background knowledge, I’m gonna add a few things to consider for my secondary peeps out there, as well as sharing one purpose comment.

I love the Form Dropbox, I have been incorporating it in my classroom since my old days before my students had GoogleEDU accounts, and although I now have access to Hapara Teacher Dashboard, Google Classroom, and Haiku Learning LMS, I still find a place for an assignment dropbox because of the ability to:

1.  Collect anything from the web that my students find, create, or add to.
2.  Everything collected lives on one, easily sortable, automatically hyperlinked, spreadsheet*.

*note:  number two is where the magic happens in my book.



With this in mind, here is a list of secondary tips, followed by 3 assignment suggestions that are worth giving a shot if you are new to the digital assignment game.

Tips:

• I like multiple choice, I only keep about 3 assignment topics up there at a time.  If the assignment name no longer appears on the form, the student cannot turn it in.  When I add a new assignment (say a longer creation task) I’ll add it to the form and that means the window of time to turn it in is now open.
• Sort by last name (say during parent meetings, back to school night, IEPs etc.) to see all of a single student’s work quickly (note this works better if each period has their own form).
• Option for Multiple Sections: Make a form for each period.  
• Want to be really organized?  Start a new Form each unit, this way you have a spreadsheet collecting content.  After a while I don’t need to be able to quickly retrieve some of that older content.  In general the spreadsheets can get pretty big so starting a new one is a good idea anyway.  May as well be organized about it.
• I add another column on the spreadsheet that I add to for whatever purpose the instructor may have in taking notes about the work.  I use this for scoring assignments so I have a record right there, but it can just as easily be used for feedback.
• Want to start using high end spreadsheet stuff?  Start collecting emails also so that you can use stuff like formemailer to send information back to students and it will all be automated at the push of a button!
• Google Classroom does some of this, but there are still deficiencies, so with this in mind, consider the following:
• It is much faster for me the instructor to see all links for all students on one page.  
• I still use classroom for Google Doc stuff because it’s awesome, I use the assignment dropbox for collecting most other things that involve web links of some sort, and anything informal.
• I really like having students curate content (find me a bunch of images related to _____, or find me videos less than 4 min on specific content ideas, etc.) so that I now have a vast library of cool stuff I didn’t have to search for.
• Once things are on a spreadsheet, there are a million cool things that you can do with the information collected, and automate workflow.  So this is a good way to get familiar with spreadsheets before you move to the advanced stuff.

Thank you so much, Sergio, for speaking to this from the high school perspective.  I appreciate you sharing the idea with me in the first place, and then being willing to be a guest on the TeachingTechNix blog!  You can click here to see a video Sergio made about the assignment dropbox he uses with his older students.

Sergio and I hope that this information was helpful to you.  Using Google Forms this way is a really great way to stay organized.  Try it...you’ll wonder how you ever did without it!

Google Drive Search Tips

If you are like me, you have quite a few files in your Google Drive.  Eventually, it can become challenging to quickly find files you need.  I've got folders, and I've got color coding, all that is wonderful, but sometimes I need a file quickly and I just don't remember where I stored it.  If you'd like to learn how to create folders and use color coding in your Google Drive, see my post about Google Drive Organization Tips.

The little search bar in your Google Drive can be pretty awesome when you know how to harness its power.  You can just type in a word and hit search, and most times you will find what you are looking for, but I want to share some tips to help you search more effectively.

The first tip is to use the drop down menu.  Many people don't even know it is there.  Type in what you are looking for and then click the little arrow at the very right side of the search bar.

*Update: There are now even more options in this drop down menu!  Try it on your Google Drive to see all the new additions.  This post will be updated in the near future to reflect the changes.

You then have three search options - File type, Opens with, and Ownership.  You don't have to use all three, but you can if you need to.  When you click on the "File type" drop down, it will give you several options for what type of file you are searching for.

When you choose the "Opens with" drop down, it gives you options depending on what apps you have installed in your Chrome browser.  Yours will be different than mine, but all the basic Google Apps will be there.

When you choose the "Ownership" drop down, you get three choices.  Owned by anyone means you don't care who created the document.  Owned by me means you created the document.  Not owned by me means you did not create the document.  This last option is helpful if you are searching for something you know you didn't create. 

Once you make your choices, you can click the blue magnifying glass button to start the search.  Let's say I wanted to search for a document, that opens in Google Sheets, that is owned by me.  This is what it would look like:

Once I click the blue button, I'll have my results!

You might notice that as you choose from the drop down menus, it changes the text in your search bar.  This is because you can also tell Drive what you are looking for by using specific typed commands.  Here are some of the advanced search options you might find helpful:

Option	Purpose	Example
Quotes	Put quotes around something to search for that exact phrase.	“right angles”
OR	You can use the word OR to find a document that has at least one of those words. This is helpful if you can’t remember the exact verbiage you used in your file.	drawing OR illustration
Minus sign	If you want a file that has a certain word but not another word.	geometry -triangle
owner:	You can use this to specify the owner of a document.	owner:bob@teachingtechnix.com
from:	You can use this to specify who shared a document with you.	from:bob@teachingtechnix.com
to:	You can use this to specify who you shared an item with.	to:bob@teachingtechnix.com
type	You can use this to specify the type of file you are searching for: document, folder, spreadsheet, presentation, PDF, image, video, drawing, form, script, or table.	type:PDF
after: before:	You can use these to specify a date range. You can use them together, or individually (use the date format yyyy/mm/dd).	after:2014/12/15 before:2015/01/03
title:	You can use this if you know the exact title.  Use it in combination with quotes if your title is more than one word.	title:“Right Angles”
app:	You can use this if you are searching for an item that can be opened by a specific app.  Use it in combination with quotes if your app is more than one word.	app:“Google Docs”
All of this information came from the Google Support site.  You can see the page I used by clicking here.

I know these search options have been extremely helpful to me when I need to find a file quickly, especially if I'm not exactly sure where I stored it in my Drive.  I hope you find them just as helpful.

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog.  Stop by again soon for more handy tech tips!

Organization Tip for Drive - File Names with Numbers

As a teacher, I tend to have many file or folder names that require numbers.  I save all my weekly plans and number them all, week 1, week 2, etc.  In my Google Drive, I have a folder with all my weekly math plans in it.  With the way Drive puts numbered files in order, this is how it looked:

I was a bit frustrated that it didn't put them all in the correct order.  Then I discovered how to solve the problem.  I went through and renamed all my single digit weeks with a 0 in front of the single digit. 

To rename your file or folder, click on the name to select the file and then click on the "More actions" button.  That is the one with the three vertical dots.  Then choose "Rename".

Rename your file so that it has two digits, the 0 being in front of your single digit.  Then press "OK".

Once you do that with all your single digit files, you will have them all in order the way they should be.  

I hope you found this tip helpful.  Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog!  Stop by again soon for more handy tech tips.

Easy Way to Filter in Gmail

Everyone wants your email address these days.  You sign up for this, for that, and for the other thing and the next thing you know, each morning greets you with 15 unread emails you don't care to read.  Every once in a while you actually want one, so you don't want to tell Gmail to delete them all when they arrive, but you don't really want to deal with them on a daily or weekly basis either.  Gmail has a good filtering system, and you can create filters and have Gmail do whatever you like with them.  This works great, but some companies have different variations of the email address they are sending from, and some messages may make it through without getting caught by the filter.  I have a solution that will help the filters in Gmail become more effective for you.

You can add a + and then whatever word you want to your email address, and it will still come to you.  You can do this with any Google Apps account.  For instance, my email is cynthia@teachingtechnix.com.  If I am signing up at a retail store, or online at someplace like Pinterest for example, when I sign up on their form, I will list my email address as cynthia+Pinterest@teachingtechnix.com.  The emails will still come to me, but I can tell Gmail to take any message sent to cynthia+Pinterest@teachingtechnix.com, which should be ALL the emails they ever send me, and mark them all as read, or archive them, whatever I wish to do with them.  No matter what words are in the messages, no matter which email address they come from, all the messages from Pinterest will get caught by the filter.  Neat, huh?  

To set up your filters, you will need to select an email.  It doesn't have to be one from the person or organization you wish to filter, but it's ok if it is.  Whether you simply select the email by clicking the check box to the left of the sender in your inbox, or you actually open the email, your instructions will be the same.  Once you do one of those two things, click on the "More" button at the top of the screen and click on "Filter messages like these".  (If you click on the "More" button before you either select the email or open it, you will not have the option you need.)  

Once you click "Filter Messages like these", you will get a box with options for your filter.  The "From" box will be autofilled with whoever the sender of the email is that you selected.  It will also say "from:" and list the sender at the very top of the option box.  It doesn't matter who it is, because you need to delete everything in the from box anyway.  We are going to set up the filter to look at who the email is sent to, not who it is from.  

Let's say I signed up at Pinterest with the email address cynthia+Pinterest@teachingtechnix.com.  (Oh how I wish I'd known about this feature long ago!  You can bet I'll be updating some email addresses!)  I want everything sent to that email address to be marked as read and archived.  That way, I can search for emails from Pinterest and look at them when I so choose and they won't clutter up my inbox.  To do this, I want to delete anything that is in the "From" box and type whatever email I signed up with into the "To" box.  Then click "Create filter with this search" at the bottom right corner of the box.  

You'll notice that the very top of the option box will update and now show that you are making a filter using "to" the email address you listed, instead of "from" the address in the email you selected to start the process.  Here is where you can choose what you want Gmail to do with the emails that come in.  I like to "Skip the Inbox (Archive it)" and "Mark as read", but you can do whatever you like.  If you look at the green arrow below, you can also add a label to the message.  I'll cover labels in a future blog post.  If you already use labels, this is where you would add a label to the incoming message if you wanted to.  Once you have selected the options you want, click on the blue "Create filter" button at the bottom left.  If you already have emails from this specific organization that were sent to the email address you are trying to filter, you'll want to make sure you check the box next to "Create" that says "Also apply filter to matching conversations".  That way the filter will catch these emails as well.

Once you click "Create filter", you are all done!  Your filter is created and now any new emails that are sent to that specific email address will do whatever you selected in your filter.  

If you need to go back and edit your filter in the future, click on the gear box in the upper right hand corner of your inbox and click "Settings".  

Across the top, select "Filters".  

You will then see any filters you have created and you can edit or delete them as you please.  

That's it!  Simple, but very cool!  I saw my husband do this at Ikea the other day and could not believe I didn't know about it sooner.  I think it's pretty handy!

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog.  I hope you found this little tip helpful!  Stop by again soon for some more handy tech tips!

Organize Parent Conference Notes With Google Forms

This is the second post in a series about using Google Forms in the classroom.  The first post can be found here.  If you aren't familiar with Google Forms, you may also want to read my Google Forms 101.

Communication between parents and teachers is integral to a student's success, especially in elementary school.  I'm halfway through a two-day parent conference marathon and I tried something new to help me organize my conference notes that I'd like to share with you.

Days or even weeks after a conference, I always find myself remembering that someone asked me about something specific, but I can't remember which parent it was.  Maybe a parent requested their child not sit next to a particular student, so when I change seats again, I know I made a note about it, but I can't find it.  So I go searching through all my student files, digging for the one paper that has the note I know I wrote about whatever it was.  Yesterday, I was thinking there had to be a way to keep all my notes about each child in a central document, but still maintain the privacy needed so parents aren't seeing what I've written about other students while I'm typing notes.  There is!  Google Forms!  

I've created a Google Form that asks for student name, date, people who attended the conference, and comments about behavior and grades.  I also left a place for additional comments and necessary follow up steps.  I open up the form for each conference, type in it as we meet, finish it up once the parent leaves, and then hit "Submit".

When I made the form, I chose the option to give a link to submit another response.  This way, when I hit "Submit", I get a link to click on that opens up a fresh form for my next conference.  Quick and easy!  

My information goes into a spreadsheet that I can access easily anytime, anywhere, from almost any device.  I can use the search function in my browser to search for any key terms when I want to find something specific.  (If you want to know more about the search function in the Google Chrome browser, check out my post about it.)

Another great function is that I will use the same form all year long.  At any point in the year, if I need to check back and look at all the conferences I've had with a particular family, I can sort my answer spreadsheet by the column containing student names.  This will put all the conferences for that child in a row for easy viewing.

This worked really well for me today and I'm excited to use it again tomorrow.  I was so excited about it last night, that I made one for all of my colleagues in grades K-5 and most of them used it today and loved it.  Such a quick and simple change can make a big difference in organization.

To get a copy of this form and make it your own, click here.

A few of my other Google Forms posts can be found by clicking the links below.

Parent Surveys with Google Forms
Anecdotal Student Notes with Google Forms
Review and Discussion Activities with Google Forms
Digital Assignment Tracking with Google Forms
File Upload: Collect Files with Google Forms

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog.  I hope you found this little tip helpful. 

Daily Reminder Lists With Gmail's Tasks Feature

As a teacher, there are things I need reminders of on certain days of the week, every week.  Recess duty, printing certain weekly assignments, Johnny's pull out at 2:00, etc.  I could use Microsoft Outlook reminders, but I'm a Google Apps user, so I don't use Outlook anymore.  I could use the reminders on my smart phone or iPad, but I don't need it to make a sound, nor do I want to be checking my phone all the time in front of my students.  I don't need an audible reminder, I just need a list somewhere that doesn't get lost in the paperwork covered pile I call my desk.  What to do, you ask?  The Tasks feature in Gmail has a handy way to solve this problem.

If you are unfamiliar with the Tasks feature in Gmail, see my Keeping Track of Tasks with Google Apps post about how to set up and use the Tasks feature.

As I showed in that post, you can create multiple tasks lists.  So why not create one for each day?  By clicking on the little bulleted list icon in the bottom right hand corner of the tasks window, you will bring up a list.  You can choose "New list" to make your lists and then just click on the list name to switch to it.

Every morning when you boot up your computer and sign into your email, switch your Tasks list to the right day of the week.  So simple!

Thanks for stopping by TeachingTechNix!  I hope to have another handy tech tip for you soon. 

Google Drive Organization Tips

Do you use Google Drive?  I know when I first started using it, my files were just all in the drive and I hadn't given much thought to organizing them.  Once I started using it often, it became necessary to be more organized.  Yes, Google Drive has an awesome search feature and you can find most any file with just a few keystrokes, but for my sanity I need some order.  I have three tips for you today:  creating folders, coloring the folders, and using those little stars in a handy way.

Creating Folders

Did you know you can create folders within your drive?  You can create them the same way you create everything else, by clicking on the red "New" button at the top left of the page.  Then choose "Folder".  This will create a folder in whatever location you happen to be in when you click the "New" button.  So if you want to create a folder within a folder, you just go into that folder and then hit the "New" button.

 

After you click "Folder", it will bring up a little window and prompt you to name your folder.  Type in whatever you want the name to be and click the blue "Create" button.

To add files or folders inside the folder, you can do a few things.  If you go into your folder, and then click "New", the new item will be stored in that folder.  To move an existing item or items into the new folder, select the item you wish to move by clicking on it once.  Then you have three options.  The easiest is to click on one of the items and drag it/them into the folder you created in the navigation bar on the left.  Note:  If your folders don't show in the navigation bar, click on the tiny gray arrow next to "My Drive" so that it is pointing down instead of to the right.  This will show the list of folders you have created within your drive.  If you have a folder inside a folder, you may have to click the tiny gray arrow next to other folders to see the folders within.

If you like things simple, that is all you need to know about moving files and folders.  If you like to know all your options - check out the rest of this section.  

Another option is to right click on your file and choose "Move to...".  It will pop up a window for you to choose which folder you want to move the file into.  (You may have to click the tiny gray arrows to expand your folders just like I explained above.)  Once you have selected the folder you want to move your file into, you can click the blue "Move" button at the bottom of the window.  You can also create a new folder from this window.  

             

The last way is to click on the file and then click the "three dots" button on the upper right hand corner of your screen.  Then choose "Move to...".  This will bring up the Move to window just like before.  

Folder Color

Another great organization tip is to change the color of your folders.  I tend to choose a color for each subject.  For example, all my Language Arts folders are orange, tech stuff is green, and Math is blue.  It just helps me find things faster.  You can use whatever classification you like.

To change the color of a folder, right click on the folder and mouse over the "Change color" option to get a list of colors.  Click on the color you want your folder to become.  Your folder will then change colors.  Fun!

  

Stars

Every file and folder in Drive can be starred.  This is supposed to be so you can select the "Starred" option in the navigation bar on the left and see all the files you have starred.  I don't have much use for this, so I use the star in a different way.  When I have a folder full of student projects, either to grade or to print, I use the star as a way to check off that I've graded and/or printed that file already.  To star a file, simply right click on the file and choose "Add star".  You can right click on an item that is starred and click "Remove star" if needed.  This has helped me not to have to filter through all of my printed documents to see which ones I still need to do, or search my desk for the sticky note I wrote the list on.

Well, I hope you found at least one of these tips to be helpful!  Check back soon for more handy tech tips.  Thanks for visiting TeachingTechNix!