Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Chromebooks

At the end of last year, the library added a cart with 30 Chromebooks! Teachers sign out these resources for their classes.  We have already had classes in to use the Chromebooks for Internet searches and creating documents in Google Drive.

Everyone with an email address powered by Google at BMCHSD has access to Google Drive. Google Drive allows you to access your files anytime, anywhere on any computer, tablet, smartphone, as long as there is an Internet connection.

There are many advantages to using Google Drive including always working on one version of a document, no email attachments back and forth, and no flash drive/external hard drive needed. You can upload documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that are already created in other programs, such as Microsoft or create new ones. There are no compatibility issues when you use Google Drive. It is a universal format. One of my favorite features is "revision history." This allows you to revert back to a previous version of the document. You can add comments to shared documents or go in and edit a document directly if given permission by the author. You also have the option to download Google Drive documents to MS Word, spreadsheets to MS Excel, and presentations to MS Powerpoint. The biggest benefit to using Google Drive over more traditional forms of word processing has definitely got to be AUTO SAVE! You'll never lose a Google Drive document because you forgot to save it before closing the application.

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