Google Drive is our primary supported collaboration and storage tool at St. Edward’s.
Currently, students, faculty and staff can access both Google Drive and Box. To better help you understand the strengths of each tool, we've put together a comparison chart of their features.
In this article, you will learn more:
You can access your personal Drive through your St. Edward’s Gmail account or by going directly to drive.stedwards.edu.
You can also search for "Google Drive" in myHilltop.
Download the Google Drive app from the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store to access your Docs, Sheets and Slides.
There’s also a separate app for Google Keep, which works with Drive and allows you to take notes or jot down to-do lists on the go.
Like Box Drive, Google offers the option to store Drive files locally on your computer. To do so, you'll need to install the Google Drive desktop app. Anything saved to your Drive folder will sync to your personal Drive.
When you leave the university (around graduation time, let’s say), you can take the files from your St. Edward's account with you. Google Takeout allows you to export data — including email, calendar items, and photos — and transfer them to another Google account.
For complete instructions, see Google's walkthrough of the process.
Google Drive is the storage platform, but the more important additions to our university toolbox are Drive's component pieces for collaboration and sharing.
Google Docs is a word processor, much like Microsoft Word or Box Notes. You can write, edit and collaborate on documents much like you would in those other tools, but with the added convenience of Google Drive and its many integrated parts.
With Google Forms, you can create simple web-based forms. The features are similar to Qualtrics but scaled down for easier use, like lightweight surveys or forms. Check out our comparison of the two to figure out which tool works best for your needs.
Use Google Sheets to make quick spreadsheets, storable and shareable within Google Drive. Features, including templates, are similar to those in Microsoft Excel.
Google Slides works well for clean, web-based presentations and provides a similar experience to Microsoft PowerPoint. (You can even convert PowerPoint slides to Google Slides, and vice versa.)
Shared Drives allow offices, departments, classes or groups to share ownership of Google Docs, Forms, Sheets and Slides. Students might find Shared Drives helpful for organizing on-campus clubs or collaborating on group projects. Faculty could create a Shared Drive for their course. Learn more about Shared Drives in Google Workspace Learning Center.
Please note that shared inboxes, such as seudining@stedwards.edu, are only able to use Google Calendar and Gmail, but are unable to access Google Drive applications such as Docs, Sheets, Slides, and others.
If you have further questions about specific Google Sites features, Google has a quick reference Help Center or find more in-depth resources in Google's Support Center.