The Google Drive Application

 
Last year and this past summer, several of you installed the Google Drive application on to your computer.  If you are needing to install this application on your computer again, please scroll to video below.  It will walk you through the process.  If you are new to the Google Drive application, then read on!

The Google Drive application gets installed on your computer desktop allowing you to sync your files between your desktop and the web.  You may be asking yourself what that means.  It means if I'm working on a Pages document, I can save it to Google Drive, either through the Google Drive folder on my computer or via Google Drive on the web.  While I can't edit the Pages document on the web, I can open and edit it through the Google Drive folder on my computer.  This means if my computer ever crashes I still have my Pages document.  I haven't lost it.  It also means if I have a computer at home with Pages on it, I can install the Google drive folder onto that computer and open/edit my Pages document without having to email it to myself and then email it back to myself for the next day at school.

Maybe you're thinking, that's nice, but I don't use Pages.  That's ok.  The other advantage of having the Google Drive folder on your computer is getting to your files faster.  If I need a specific file in Google Drive, I can either run a quick search on my computer or go straight to the file in my Google Drive folder.  I click it on and it instantly takes me to the file on the web.  I might need to login, but I just cut down the number of steps it took me to get to that file.

Personally, I have started using Google Drive as my own online storage for almost all of my files.  I've started storing videos, images and audio recordings in my Drive along with all my regular word processing files and spreadsheets.  The only drawback is you only get 30GB of storage.  For most people, that is plenty of storage, but for the video and photo hounds out there this might not be enough storage.

Installation Instructions
Before you install the Google Drive application on your computer, please make sure it's not already on your computer.  You can do this by going to your applications folder and looking for the application Google Drive.  If it is already in your list of applications, then click it to open.  If it is not in your list of applications, then follow the instructions in this video: