Classroom is a free web-based platform that integrates your G Suite for Education account with all your G Suite services, including Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Calendar. Classroom saves time and paper, and makes it easy to create classes, distribute assignments, communicate, and stay organized. Teachers can quickly see who has or hasn't completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback and grades right in Classroom.
- Creating a Class and Adding Students:
Google Classroom allows you to create a unique class for every class that you teach. In just three mouse clicks and a few keystrokes you can create a class. Google Classrooms are divided into different sections... for the purpose of this article, I will cover Students and the Stream.
In the Students section you can view all the students in your class. You can either add students to your class manually, or they can join your class on their own using their own Google account. When you create a class, Google Classroom provides you with a class code located on the left side of the screen. Share that class code with the students you want to join that class. From their computers, laptops, or Chromebooks, students log into their Google accounts and use the class code to join. Within the Student section you can also determine if your students are allowed to comment on the questions, announcements, and assignments you create or if they can only post. If you desire you can also choose to be the only one who can post and comment in your class. In the Stream section you’ll find the assignments, announcements, and questions that you create. This is the section in which you’ll spend most of your time after your classes are set up. Read below to learn about assignments, questions, and announcements within Google Classroom. - Using Google Classroom Assignments:
Assignments are a great way to collect student work and provide your students with feedback and grades. When you create an assignment you can provide specific instructions for that assignment, a due date, and a topic. If you include a due date for the assignment, students will have until 11:59 PM on the date to submit their work for that assignment. If they submit the work late, Google Classroom still accepts the assignment, but indicates that it was turned in late. - Spark Discussions with the Questions Feature:
Google Classroom allows you to ask a question within a specific class. As with assignments you can add files to the questions you post, and can assign a due date to it if you want. You can post short answer or multiple choice questions for your students to respond to in Classroom. As students answer a multiple choice question, Google Classroom tabulates the results for that question and shows you the breakdown of the students’ answers in real-time. When you click on one of the multiple choice answers, Classroom indicates which students chose that option. When students respond to a short answer question, Google Classroom cannot tabulate the results so it simply shows student responses. At that point you can comment or reply to each student, and give a grade as you see fit. - Announcements for Your Students:
In addition to creating assignments and questions, Google Classroom allows you to create announcements. Students can respond to your announcements and you can respond back, creating a thread. In reality the entire class can have a conversation based on one announcement. Once again you have the option of adding a file, a YouTube video, or a link to an announcement.
Announcements are a great way to post reminders about assignment due dates to your students. You can even schedule announcements to post at a later date, which can help you stay organized as well as your students.
