With the end of the year quickly approaching, it’s a good time to clean up your Google Workspace account including Google Drive and Gmail, and your bookmarks in Chrome. If you’re looking for procedures on how to clean up Google Classroom, I recommend checking out Eric Curts‘ blog post on this.
Save Student Work
I like saving work from students to have as examples that I can use to show students in the future. I also like to add work to my professional portfolio to show the types of lessons and projects I have worked on with students. I have kept a portfolio since grad school and have used it when applying for new jobs, awards, or grants. However, if the student has shared their work with you or turned it in another way, and deletes it, you will lose access to the document. You can save student work by opening the file, selecting File and then Make a Copy. Rename it if needed and create a new folder just for student work that you can move documents to.
“Un-share” Files or Delete Un-needed Files
Most of the teachers in my district share files by the URL link or in Canvas, but if you have shared files with students or colleagues and they no longer need access, such as if they are leaving the district, you will need to remove access by clicking on each individual. If you have files in a shared folder, you can remove access to that folder as the contents inside the folder will no longer be shared. This might be a good idea for next year to create one folder that you add files to and share the entire folder with students. As you add new files you don’t have to worry about sharing these, as anything added will be automatically shared.
The next thing to do is rename or delete any files labeled “untitled”. Then re-organize files into folders labeled with categories or school year. You can star important or frequently accessed files and then click on the “Starred” label in the left side navigation for easy access.
If you use Google Assignments in Canvas, see below.
Additional Items
Have you used WeVideo, Screencastify or Pear Deck this year? Videos from WeVideo and Screencastify, as well as Pear Deck Handouts can be published to Google Drive. Take a look to see if you have these specifically named folders in your Drive and if these need a clean-up too!
Google Assignments from Canvas
Just like above, if you use the Google Assignments LTI in Canvas, you will a specifically named folder for this too. However, unlike these other folders, do not touch this folder. Leave it as is and do not delete assignments. Deleting these could cause issues with whole assignments being deleted or grades changing.
Shared Drives
What’s a Shared Drive? These are shared spaces where a group (i.e. Departments, grade levels, teams) can easily store, search, and access their files. Documents in Shared Drives belong to the “group” instead of an individual. Even if members leave, the documents stay exactly where they are so your group can continue to share information and work.
This means no more losing documents, making copies of or having to switch owners of documents when a teacher leaves and their account is suspended or deleted. If your department/grade level is interested in setting this up for next year, talk with your Technology department for more information. Visit the Google Workspace Admin Help page, if you would like to learn more about Shared Drives.
Shared with Me
I don’t usually bother with the Shared with Me section of my Google Drive. If a file has been shared with me I access it through the link in the email notification. If it’s something I will need to go back to frequently, I’ll add it to my Drive where I can organize it into one of my folders. The below video will show you more (and be prepared for the think southern accent!):
Clean Up Gmail Notifications
You probably receive a lot of notifications when things are shared with you. You can delete these notifications by using the select all button to select multiple emails and delete. Or use the search bar to filter for key phrases such as “shared a link” or “invitation to edit” and then delete these emails.
Chrome Bookmarks and Extensions
This is also a great time to update your bookmarks and extensions. When was the last time you used some of these? If it’s been a while, do you really need it? For bookmarks, you can either delete any that are not needed or save it to a social bookmarking site such as Diigo or Wakelet. To delete, click on the bookmarks drop down and right-click on the name of the bookmark and select delete.
Extensions can’t be saved elsewhere, so if you think you might need one in the future, it’s better to leave it as is. You can delete extensions by right-clicking on the extension icon and select “remove from chrome”.
Leaving Your School District?
If you’re leaving your school district, Google has a solution for how you can take your stuff with you! It’s called Google Takeout. This will allow you to download your files: documents, videos, PDFs, just about everything you own and export a copy of your content that you can then import into another Google account. Be careful here! You have to be the owner of the content for it to go with you. If a document is shared with you, you will need to make a copy of it so you become the document owner.
Ms Priester EDU 