I finally got my invitation to join Google Classroom! Have you? I never thought it would arrive!
Of course, I dove right in…literally I checked my email at 10:30 one evening and couldn’t go back to sleep 🙂
My favorite aspect of Google Classroom is the ability to send documents to my students directly without having to make copies of the document or walk through tedious scripting processes. Students each receive their own copy of each document I wish to send to them. If I’d rather allow my students to simply view or edit a document, I can set those rights in the Assignment process.
I also love that students will log on to their Classroom, see immediately any assignments they have for all of their classes (provided those teachers use Classroom) and be able to complete and submit those assignments within their Classroom portal. NO more jumping back and forth between their Drive and their Learning Management System!
As of yet, I haven’t found a way for students to engage in “discussion board” activities, where the teacher posts a question or topic and students respond to the original topic, as well as to each other. I ran into a similar problem using other Learning Management Systems…students were able to respond to an original question, but were then unable to respond to a classmates’ post directly. Instead, we had to resort to beginning our response posts with “I agree with you, Student A,” or “@StudentA.” This isn’t a huge problem, and by no means a deal breaker…just a luxury my students and I would like to have 🙂
The file organization through Classroom is also amazing. As soon as I created my account, a new folder “Classroom” appeared in my Drive. When I created new classes, each class was given a subfolder in the Classroom folder…I had to do nothing! Teachers can choose to create documents directly in the Classroom folder, class subfolders, or in a different folder within their Drive. Selecting documents to share with students in the Assignment section is SO easy!
I can’t wait to discover more about Classroom, and will definitely be using this in my classroom this fall.
Below is some information you may find helpful!
- Classroom Info (by Bethany Petty)
- Google Classroom Intro from YouTube
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