Google Drive: All the Storage You'll Ever Need

Over the course of my teaching career (seven years), I've gone from using blank cd's, jump drives, a laptop, my own email account, Dropbox and other cloud services, to Google Drive. I still use services like Dropbox on my phone to store photos and such, but for my work files, Google Drive is all I need.

From the start, Google Drive gives you 5 gigabytes of storage. Only stored files that are not in Google Doc format count against your 5 gigs. I have tons of files in pdf format, jpegs, docs, etc, and haven't even put a 1% dent in my 5 gigs. I love that I can use my Drive on my phone, I can drop files into it on my computer and they immediately sync, and I can control the sharing and search-ability of individual files.

Most files translate over to the Google Doc format without too much trouble. Occasionally I'll find a file that gets messed up a little in Google Docs, so those files I keep in their original format, and they count against my storage.

If you don't have a Google account, GET ONE! I use Google for my document storage and editing (when I'm away from home or work), I use Google + to store my photos (this doesn't count against my Drive), and Google offers so many services, not to mention how great Gmail is. I highly recommend Google Drive, the 5 GB for free is a great deal, and the deals on upgraded storage are awesome (25 GB for $2.50 a month is awesome).

Free Online Service For Editing PDF Documents: PDFescape

If you're at all like me, you're constantly coming across pdf documents that contain great resources you want to use in your classroom. The problem is, the rest of the information isn't always great.

Now, I'm not advocating taking someone else's work and editing it, then passing it off as your own. But sometimes, I want to isolate the good pages in a pdf document, and for that, I came across a great web service called PDFescape. It's completely free, and will let you delete pages from a pdf, erase portions of pages, make annotations, highlights, etc. You can then download the pdf you created. You can do all of this without an account, for free. I've used it dozens of times and am constantly going back. It's a great service for the teacher who uses pdf documents.