Technology Staff only

Google Workspace

Google Workspace is a collection of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products.

How to access

Staff can access Google Workplace from the department's staff portal. Log in to the Staff portal and select the red Google Workspace from ‘My Essentials’. If it's not there, you can add it from the list of all available apps.

If you are logged in to a personal or other Gmail account on the same browser, you will need to change to your work account to access items from Google workspace.

Use the @education.nsw.gov.au handle with your portal password when prompted to log in. For example, jane.citizen@education.nsw.gov.au instead of jane.citizen@det.nsw.edu.au.

Alternatively open Google Workspace from My essentials and go to Drive. You can then select either My Drive for your own files, or Shared with me for files that have been shared with you by others.

Create and Collaborate

Google Drive is a cloud storage service that offers staff and students unlimited storage to store and share files that can be accessed from anywhere while connected to the internet.

Features:

  • create and collaborate with others
  • share documents and files
  • create, documents, spreadsheets and presentations with Google’s Docs, Sheets and Slides apps
  • staff have the ability to create dedicated shared drives to be used by faculties, cohorts, project teams, etc. to host and share content
  • shared drives offer improved sharing and content management experience.

Watch the Google Drive introduction video.

More information can be found on the Digital Learning Selector.

Google Classroom is an online classroom management platform that offers classroom teachers a streamlined way to:

  • deliver assignments
  • boost collaboration
  • foster communication.

Classroom is available on the web or by mobile app. You can use Classroom with many tools that you already use, such as, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, as well as integrate with 3rd party vendor products.

More information can be found on the Digital Learning Selector.

Docs is a cloud-based Word processor, allowing you to create and edit text documents from your web browser.

Docs support sharing, commenting and live editing, whereby, multiple people can work on a document at the same time, and every change is saved automatically.

Features:

  • commenting, chat in real-time, within the same document
  • import documents of many different file types to make them instantly editable, including Microsoft® Word and PDF files
  • export your work in .docx, .pdf, .odt, .rtf, .txt or .html format
  • track changes made to your documents and undo anything you choose, (previous versions are kept indefinitely)
  • share with anyone within the department or externally
  • access and edit files offline.

More information can be found on the Digital Learning Selector.

Google Sheets is an online spreadsheet app that lets you create and format spreadsheets and work with other people.

Features:

  • create new spreadsheets or edit existing files
  • share spreadsheets and collaborate in the same spreadsheet at the same time.
  • work anywhere, anytime: even offline.
  • add and respond to comments.
  • format cells, enter or sort data, view charts, insert formulas, use find/replace and more.
  • work is saved automatically as you type.
  • get insights, instantly, quickly insert charts and apply formatting in one tap, with Explore.
  • open, edit and save Excel files.

More information can be found on the Digital Learning Selector.

Google Slides is an online presentation app that lets you create and format presentations and work with other people.

Slides supports:

  • sharing
  • commenting
  • live editing, enabling multiple people to work on slides at the same time, you can see people’s changes as they make them, and every change is automatically saved.

More information can be found on the Digital Learning Selector.

Create custom forms for surveys and questionnaires and gather form responses in a Google sheets.

Forms allows you to create great looking surveys to gain valuable insights.

Add images, videos, and custom logic to give people who respond a great survey experience.

Share forms with an email, a link or a website and enable real-time collaboration to help you create forms faster and or to analyse results together without having to send around multiple versions of the file.

More information can be found on the Digital Learning Selector.

Google Sites is a simple and effective website builder that does not require skill in web development and coding.

Sites enables the owner to share the designing aspects with multiple people.

Access to published sites can be limited to selected individuals or opened up to the public.

More information can be found on the Digital Learning Selector.

Blogger is an easy to use blog platform that can be used as an online forum for discussion with students and colleagues.

Blogger offers an easy and intuitive experience publishing content to the web, with the public or with specific people and groups.

More information, including best practice guides on how to use blogger with your students can be found on the Digital Learning Selector.

Google Chat is an intelligent and secure communications tool, built for teams.

Use Chat for direct messages to team chat rooms or direct messaging with colleagues.

Features:

  • Easily create dedicated virtual rooms to keep projects organized and on track.
  • Shared chat, including threaded conversations and shared files and tasks help you keep everyone on the same page.
  • Chat supports external users, 28 languages and 8,000 members per room.
  • Easily integrate both Google and third-party apps, like Salesforce and Jira, to keep all of your notifications in one place, and use bots to automate simple tasks so you can focus on what matters.

For more information, visit Google Chat support.

Google Meet is a video conferencing service that allows staff to host and schedule video meetings from the web browser, without the need of any additional software. Google Calendar and Google Classroom to enable a quick streamlined way of scheduling and launching meetings.

Features:

  • host up to 100 participants, including external participants
  • presentations and screen sharing
  • use the Meet app for Android and iOS
  • record meetings & saving them to Drive (recordings have an expiry of 30 days).

Controls:

  • block anonymous users (i.e., without a Google Account) to join meetings.
  • jamboard integration
  • admit or deny entry to a meeting
  • mute or remove participants.

For more information and support, visit Google Chat.

Jamboard is digital whiteboard that offers a rich collaborative experience for teams and classrooms.

You can create a Jam, edit it from your device, and share it with others. Everybody can collaborate on the Jam together at the same time.

More information can be found on the Digital Learning Selector.

Currents allows you to connect with your colleagues and have meaningful discussions and interactions across the Organisation. Currents helps connect your organization around shared interests, helping you collaborate with team members.

Features:

  • join or create a community
  • post messages to the entire company, to specific groups, as well as direct messages to specific individuals
  • connect with like-minded colleagues and find communities that match your interests
  • follow tags on topics. Learn more about what is happening in other units and across the Organisation with trending tags.

For more information, visit Google Currents.

Organise

Create events, invite and accept invitations and set reminders for you and your students. Can be embedded into a variety of applications.

Calendar is integrated with Google products such as Google Classroom and Google Meet.

For more information, visit the Digital Learning Selector.

Create and back up contacts in your Google Account to the cloud. Access the contacts in your Google Account from any device.

Create contact groups to be used for sharing and collaborating on content in Google Drive.

For more information, visit the Digital Learning Selector.

Groups for Business has a range of features, primarily used for the following tasks:

  • Email lists/mailing lists, making it simple to setup and communicate with large numbers of people.
  • Collaborative Inbox to hold online discussion groups that let members manage conversations that arrive into the inbox.
  • Share documents, sites, videos, and calendars to a group.

For more information and support, visit Google Groups for Business.

Google Photos is a photo sharing and storage service that can automatically organize your content and make it easy to share.

Photos supports most common photo file formats and many video file formats.

For more information can be found on the Digital Learning Selector.

Google Keep is a note-taking service that allows you to capture notes, share them with others and access them from your computer, phone or tablet.

Notes lets you add notes, lists and photos, as well as record a voice memos that are transcribed into a note.

For more information, visit the Digital Learning Selector.

Feed Burner is a web feed management service that lets you stay on top of the latest events, from your favourite websites, blogs, and podcasts.

For more information and support, visit Feed Burner.

Investigate

Google Books offers a way of searching for books, magazines and newspapers and a facility to download a copy of the material, depending on copyright status or provide options to purchase it.

Advanced search enables filtering on: content types, language, title, author, publisher, subject and publication date.

For more information and support, visit Google Books.

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature.

Search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.

Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.

For more information, visit Scholar.

Explore a 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery.

'Fly' anywhere in seconds and explore hundreds of 3D cities right in your browser. Roll the dice to discover someplace new, take a guided tour, and create your own maps and stories.

For more information, visit the Digital Learning Selector.

My Maps allows you to create and share your own maps online with My Maps.

Add custom pins, layers, directions, and distances, as well as images, videos and descriptions to places that are added to the map.

Maps are stored in your Google Drive and can be shared and supports simultaneous editing and collaboration.

Maps that you have created can be accessed from Google Maps.

For more information, visit Digital Learning Selector.

  • Google Translate is able to instantly translate words, phrases and web pages between English and over 100 other languages.
  • Translate is able to translate speech as well as translation of text in images (mobile device only).

For more information and support, visit Google Translate Help.

The Google Public Data Explorer makes large, public-interest datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand.

You don't have to be a data expert to navigate between different views, make your own comparisons, and share your findings.

Students, journalists, policy makers and everyone else can play with the tool to create visualizations of public data, link to them, or embed them in their own webpages. Embedded charts and links can update automatically so you’re always sharing the latest available data.

All of the datasets in the Public Data Explorer are provided by third-party data providers, such as international organizations, national statistical offices, non-governmental organizations, and research institutions.

For more information and support, visit Public Data.

Data Studio is tool that turns your data into informative, easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable dashboards and reports.

Use the drag and drop report editor to:

  • Create charts, including line, bar, and pie charts, geo maps, area and bubble graphs, paginated data tables and pivot tables.
  • Make your reports interactive with viewer filters and date range controls. The data control turns any report into a flexible template report that anyone can use to see their own data.
  • Include links and clickable images to create product catalogs, video libraries, and other hyperlinked content.
  • Annotate and brand your reports with text and images.
  • Apply styles and color themes that make your data stories works of data visualization art.
  • Import data from a range of sources, including:
    • Google consumer products, such as Sheets, YouTube, and Search Console
    • Databases, including BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
    • Flat files via CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage.
  • Invite others to view or edit your reports, or send them links in scheduled emails.
  • You can embed your reports in other pages, such as Google Sites, blog posts, marketing articles, and annual reports.

For more information and support, visit Data Studio Help.

Support

Looking for help getting started with Google Workspace?

The Technology for Learning team (T4L) offers a great range of self-paced learning from various aspects of Google Workspace. Visit Google Resources and check the menu on the left for a list of all Google apps and services included.

Need technical assistance?

You can log an online request with EdConnect or call them on 1300 32 32 32 to request it. Provide clear details of your query/issue and the Google app or service you are using.

Category:

  • Workplace, office and collaboration

Business Unit:

  • Information Technology
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