Google’s social network, Google+ never reached the level of popularity as other social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Now, its new iteration, Currents, is geared towards helping organizations effectively communicate and share information. Let’s take a look at what to expect from the newest G Suite app and explore some ways to share it with your school and your colleagues.

The Currents app is accessible from the waffle icon just like any other Google app that you are using. Make sure you are signed in to your G Suite for Education account and look for the icon shown here.

Navigating Currents

#Tags

Currents is a great resource for sharing project updates and information specific to teams in an organization. Two main ways that information can be shared is through the use of tags and communities. Imagine you are collaborating with colleagues on curriculum planning or brainstorming ideas for a new school club. You can organize posts for either of these by creating tags specific to each (#curriculum2020 or #roboticsclub). Now any posts that are made with these tags will be easily searchable for all stakeholders.

Communities

Communities are another way you can organize around completing projects and sharing information. Using one of the examples above, imagine you want to work together on developing a blended learning curriculum specifically for English Language Learners. You can create a community with fellow ENL teachers to share your ideas and lessons to only the members of that community. To do this, you would navigate to the Communities tab and choose “New Community” and invite only the relevant coworkers from your department.

These are just a few of the ways that you can use Currents when it rolls out to your domain. If you would like to learn more about other G-Suite for Education apps, be sure to visit OTIS for educators and search the Google category.