Sunday, January 16, 2022

Storage, Clean Up & Recommendations You Can Do

This year I am going to have to make some big changes to my Google Drive. I am nearing the max storage for my personal account and I am going to HAVE to take care of it. I have stumbled on a super easy way to see where my storage is being used and it comes with some suggestions on what I can get rid of.

Now, I AM talking about my personal account, but if I'm smart, I'll also pay attention to my school account because education domains will soon have limited storage as well. (For more information on the differences in storage and all features, please refer to Compare Editions.) And while I am not super worried right now, I DO know that if I'm going to share easy tips, I'm going to also go ahead and take advantage of them in my school account, too!

I have a LOT in my Google account. The line showing my storage is colored yellow ... I'm at 83% full. HOW? It's not that I am unorganized it's that I've been using Google for a long time and I've been loving how it saves to the cloud and I can access it anywhere. So I've been using it. 

I found a link to see how my storage was being used at the very bottom of my Gmail awhile back and now I also see it in Drive. But I ALSO heard on John Sowash's podcast, The Chromebook Classroom, the episode called "10 Links you should click (Jan 2022)" about Google One website. It's brilliantly helpful!

Interested in what you can see and tips on cleaning up your Google account? Check out this video:




After I recorded, I emptied the trash in my Drive and saved myself 10% of my storage! Easy peasy! (And most of them were videos I had deleted.)  WOW! I even noticed that clicking on the storage cloud in Drive will take you to a list of the largest files in your Drive. Easy way to delete your larger files that you no longer need, right? 


Don't put this off ... paying for storage is not a bad idea, but don't paying for storage when you don't really have to.

I didn't mention working on organization, but if you are interested in working on that, I've got a few resources for you:



Saturday, January 8, 2022

New Year's Goals I Can Do & You Can, too!

I had this whole blog written and then I realized I had it backwards. I do not make New Year's resolutions. I have made daily resolutions for the past 2 years. I have attempted to focus on 3-5 personal and 5 school related goals each day. I include big goals and little tasks. I include boring and routine items as well as exciting and thrilling. 

And then I read John Spencer's blog post, Using the SLIME Method for Setting New Year’s Resolutions, and I knew exactly what I had been missing (ok, I actually listened to his podcast, also linked in the article above). 

I LOVE John's proposal to do AND let go ... to keep doing AND get better ... and to have fun. And to wrap it up with the acronym "SLIME"? So fun! And be sure to read all the way through John's post. Near the bottom, he covers the difference between process & product goals. This is critical because I believe they go together. I realize that by having my daily goals/tasks, I am itemizing my process goals in order to achieve my product goals. After listening to John, I realize how important these daily goals/tasks are to me in order to achieve my larger product goals. Yes! 

Here are my 2022 SLIME goals/resolutions - I firmly believe that writing them down and sharing them makes me more accountable. 

Start: use Smore to share out resources in a more "collection" manner
Let go: of the stress & guilt I put on myself
Improve: my time spent with my family - both immediate & extended
Maintain: the new strength training consistency
Experiment: work on a top secret project (or two!)

Can you do this with students? Sure! They may not fully understand it without your guidance but John's graphics and built in suggestions can help. This could also make a great mid-year reflection and writing or video or creative assignment. 

Are you looking for other activities to do with your students at the beginning of this new year? I've started building "The New Year" Wakelet Collection.  If you have something I could add, I'd love to know about it! Please post it below or tag me on social media. We are better together!