After my crash course last week, I decided to discuss how Google Classroom was working for some of my co-workers who were also launching it this term in their class. I had a good talk with another Seventh Grade Teacher Mrs. Bhamra who told me that the class had taken to Google Classroom "like fish to water", and she hasn’t had a single student tell her that they can’t find their work because it is all shared on the Google Drive. She told me that if she could convince the school (or students) to buy Chrome Books then she’d move to a completely paperless classroom. I would say that is a fairly resounding endorsement. She did say though, that there were some issues with using Google slides on the i-Pads, but other than that she is really happy with the platform.
I don’t have access to i-Pads in my class at this time, but I wanted to get my students working collaboratively by using Google Docs and Google Drive, so I spent a good chunk of my weekend, setting up their Google IDs. I could have had the students set them up, but this way, I know the IDs are done correctly and they are ready to go for class on Monday. Students from each of the two classes I teach are working with partners in the other class, so by using Google Docs they can save work to the Drive and their partner can pick up where they left off when they get to my class. The other big benefit to getting them up and running sooner than later is that the Google Apps for Education tools will be familiar to them, when I introduce them to Google Classroom later this term.
While setting up the student accounts was time consuming, it was pretty simple and straightforward, just took time to input all the students’ information, IDs and passwords. Here are a couple of the screen shots from the process.
I don’t have access to i-Pads in my class at this time, but I wanted to get my students working collaboratively by using Google Docs and Google Drive, so I spent a good chunk of my weekend, setting up their Google IDs. I could have had the students set them up, but this way, I know the IDs are done correctly and they are ready to go for class on Monday. Students from each of the two classes I teach are working with partners in the other class, so by using Google Docs they can save work to the Drive and their partner can pick up where they left off when they get to my class. The other big benefit to getting them up and running sooner than later is that the Google Apps for Education tools will be familiar to them, when I introduce them to Google Classroom later this term.
While setting up the student accounts was time consuming, it was pretty simple and straightforward, just took time to input all the students’ information, IDs and passwords. Here are a couple of the screen shots from the process.