Do you ever find yourself lost in the depths of your digital files? Can’t find things that you know you have somehow? Don’t remember what you titled a document so it’s not coming up in your search? Your Google Drive is where files go to die? Yeah I’ve been there and I’m (finally) done with that! Let’s organize your Google Drive!
Getting my digital files organized was a daunting task at first! But by putting on some Netflix and finding a system that works for me made it less painful!
Depending on your past teaching history (how many grades you’ve taught, subjects ect.) your system might look a bit different than mine. I have taught 4 grades, some elementary, some middle school and 2 different subjects. So my organizing system has a lot of divisions and folders to help keep me more organized!
I use Google Drive to organize everything. It makes it so easy to keep track of things and I love how you can share folders and files with my school account. That way I can access things at home and school and I never leave things behind! Google Drive also makes organizing digital files a breeze!
A helpful hint before we start: you can (and should) try to highlight multiple files before moving them into folders. I look for a few files of the same type that I could highlight at once to move them. This way, I moved files in batches. Such a time saver!
Step 1: Sort by Grade
I have 1 folder for each grade that I have taught. As I went through files, I would right click multiple files at a time to move into just that grade’s folder. This part went the slowest because I had 3rd, 5th, 6th and 8th to work through.
Step 2: Sort by Subject
Within each grade level, I would sort the files by subject. When I taught elementary I taught everything so I have multiple folders inside both 3rd and 5th grade. While doing this step I added a back to school folder and one for the end of the year. I also numbered the order in which I taught each subject so that I could keep everything in order of my day.
Step 3: Sort by Topic/Unit
In a few subjects, I sorted by topic or unit. For example, I organized 5th grade social studies by unit. However for 3rd grade math I just had all the resources in a math folder and called it good. Depending on the number of resources you have for that subject, you might be fine leaving it as is or you might want to go a step further.
Step 4: Sort by Activity Type
This step I only did for a few subjects, 6th grade math being the example. I bought an entire curriculum on TPT so I had a ton of resources that I wanted to be super organized. So, I made 3 folders inside of each unit, one for activities, one for assessments and one for notes. This helps me find what I’m looking for a little faster. I didn’t do this for any other subject but I think this system will help me out in the long run.
Step 5: Make a Table of Contents
You can click over here to see how I further organized my files by creating a clickable table of contents. It’s like a cheat sheet for your files!
How do you organize your digital files? Any tips that have worked for you?
And there you have it! I finally have a (digital) filing cabinet that is actually useable! How do you organize your digital files?
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