12 GAFE Posts to Help You Manage Your Classroom

School is officially in session for the 2015-2016 school year. It’s the perfect time for a GAFE check-in. Since more schools now incorporate Google Apps into the way they teach each and everyday, we thought it was the perfect time to share lots of great content to help our educators be the most efficient and organized GAFE users in their classrooms.

At Backupify, we use Google Apps everyday as do many of our edu customers (Berklee College of Music, Truckee Meadows Community College, Saint Ann’s School, and more!) so blogging about GAFE best practices has become one of our favorite topics. If you’re interested in all things GAFE, check out our favorite GAFE blog posts:

Reasons to Implement Google Apps at Your School: Over 55 million top educators see the value of implementing GAFE at their schools and universities today. If you are among them, this post will help you make the executive case for moving to GAFE.

Managing Your Classroom with Google Apps Tools: In this post, we discuss 6 useful classroom tasks that GAFE can help you accomplish. Whether it be creating a Google Site for your syllabus, or creating Google+ communities for discussion, we’ve got it covered.

Classroom Writing Tips with Google Docs: Using Google Docs for shared classroom notes has become a common practice. It keeps students engaged and informed. In this post, we’re discussing shared note-taking among a few more easy writing tips to implement in your classroom.

GAFE Security for Students and Simpler Workflows: GAFE has made classroom usage both secure and simple. Learn how Google Classroom restricts access to staff and students, keeping outside users out of potentially sensitive data. Workflow pains are also resolved when Google Classroom replicates assignments administrators create and disburses them to each student in the domain.

Simple Hacks for GAFE: Much like losing your place in a novel, it’s painful to lose your place in a lengthy doc. Google Docs solves this by allowing you to create Bookmarks. You simply highlight text or blank space you’d like to be able to jump too and hit ‘add bookmark’ from the Insert menu. This hack, among others, will save you time and add efficiency.

Take your Google Docs Word Processing to the Next Level: 4 Hacks: Did you know that you can automatically apply Google Translate to a Google Doc? Or that the Google Docs Research Pane can create citations for the links you put in documents? Uncover two more useful hacks in this post!

Consolidating your Domains for GAFE: Unfortunately, Google Classroom, does not offer you the ability to collaborate across different domains. Many educational institutions require multiple subdomains (i.e. faculty.myschool.edu, students.myschool.edu) to do so.

GAFE Global Reach: The global reach of GAFE has grown immensely. Entire countries’ educational systems have implemented the platform. The GAFE suite is also saving school districts millions. This post features an infographic highlighting the important numbers to consider in regards to GAFE implementation.

Becoming a PhD in GAFE: In this post we share 5 tips that will make you the most GAFE savvy administrator out there. Create quizzes with Google Forms, use metrics to track student performance, collect student feedback, and much more!

GAFE 101: If you’re new to GAFE, we’re offering a breakdown defining what GAFE offers, highlighting the benefits, and discussing the security of your Google Apps in this post.

GAFE Tips for Teachers by Teachers: No one understands the management of a classroom better than those on the front lines – the teachers! We caught up with Google certified teachers and gathered their thoughts and opinions on GAFE.

9 Pieces of Advice for Adopting GAFE: If you’re going to be implementing GAFE soon, or need a little help getting started, these 9 tips are a must. We dive deep into who should be involved in the transition, the value of Hangouts, and working with other faculty to make GAFE at your school the best it possibly can be.

So there you have it. We’ve compiled 12 awesome pieces of GAFE content that we are sure will make this school year that much easier for you. If you’re new to GAFE, take advantage of the many tips above and it will shine through in your classroom. If you’re already a GAFE enthusiast, a refresher can’t hurt – and you may even learn something new!