Getting Started with the Google Drive Desktop App

The Google Drive Desktop App allows you to sync folders from your computer with your Google Drive Account.  It functions much like Dropbox except that it give you WAY more space.  For teachers (and students), the nice thing about using the Google Drive App, is that if you are using a home computer, you can simply save your work from any program (i.e. MS Word, Movie Maker, Audacity, iMovie, etc.) to your Google Drive folder and then still be able to access it when you are at school and using your Google Apps account. Lost memory sticks? Not a problem because your work is saved directly to the cloud.

A couple of things to note...

1. You still need to enable offline access for your Google Docs/Sheets/Slides (it's shown in the tutorial).
2. You can only set up the Google Drive Desktop App for one Google Account at a time.  So if you have a personal account and a work account, you will need to choose between them (tip: create a shared folder for stuff you need access to from either account).  Teachers who are storing student data, should use their Google Apps for Education (GAFE) Account and not their personal Gmail accounts.
3. Files that have been shared with you won't sync until you add them to "My Drive" or a synced folder in your Google Drive.

In the video below, I will show you how to set up the Google Drive Desktop App using a Windows 8 computer and the new Google Drive interface.