Taking your Google work with you

For graduating seniors, work that has accumulated in their Google Apps for Education accounts will go away after graduation when their accounts are de-activated. This is also true for teachers who may be leaving the district. But you can take just a few steps to make sure you can hold on to any work you have created. There are two main ways to do it:

By individual document (share and copy)

If you only have a few projects, presentations or papers you’d like to keep, this is the best choice. You can share the document with an outside (personal) Google account, and make a copy of the shared document that will be owned by you. Make sure you make a NEW copy -- if you just share it with your personal account, when the original document goes, so does your shared access.

BENEFITS: You keep the documents in Google format exactly as you created them.

DRAWBACKS: The process must be repeated for every document you want to keep. A short video explaining the process for students (but which applies to teachers as well) can be found here:

http://screencast.com/t/8j4BjdROn

By entire account (Google Takeout)

If you have lots of data, many documents or just want to have an archive of the work you’ve done at Homestead, you can download your entire account using Google Takeout. More information about downloading your data can be found here: https://support.google.com/accounts/ answer/3024190?hl=en

BENEFITS: You can download your entire account with a few clicks.

DRAWBACKS:  The process converts your files to Word, PowerPoint, etc. (it does not keep your documents in Google Docs format). If you want to continue to use your documents with Google Apps, you will need to re-import them to a personal Google account.

To use Google Takeout, go to https://www.google.com/settings/takeout. A short video explaining the process can be found here: https://youtu.be/Xi4NfudYhLo (again, the video explains the process for students but the same applies for teacher accounts).  Ask at the library with any questions.