On the final part of my Google journey, I explore Google Classrooms. This part of my destination just made sense. If I'm using Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawings...then why would I still work off of a classroom management system that doesn't support that work. Currently, my class website is through Moodle - which has been awesome for years. However, if I were to continue to use it to house student assignments, discussions, and drop boxes I would also have to teach students how to convert everything to either Microsoft Office equivalents or PDFs...and that seems like a lot of extra work. So, this last week I shall create four new Google Classrooms: English 11, CP English 11, English 12, and CP English 12.
The first thing I did was create a classroom for each course. I also create a classroom for a club at my school called H2O (Help to Others). I am one of the advisers of the club and I thought a Google classroom would be super useful to have rather than communicating only through email with the members. Creating a classroom was very easy. You simply clicked on the "+" sign then selected "Create Class".
I also discovered this is how my students will join my class. They will go to www.classroom.google.com then select the "+" and then select "join class". From there I will give them a class code to enter in order to join my Google classroom.
I could also "invite" students but that would take much longer than just having them "join" the class I would like for them to enter. Plus, this will be there first introduction to the Google Classroom and they can get acquainted with doing things independently on the management system.
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After, I got all of my classrooms set up I began exploring what you could do within the classrooms. I discovered, as shown below, how to upload videos and documents to the page. I also discovered how students could turn in assignments to me. The absolutely wonderful thing about Google Classroom is the page automatically creates a folder onto my drive where student work will go after they upload an assignment. On Moodle, I had to always create the turn in folder, have students turn in work, download the folder, then open each file individually from that folder.
I also discovered how to create a discussion on the front page. I posed a question in which students will respond to and ultimately interact with one another. I can also reuse these posts...so, if my students in CP English 11 were to do this discussion as well I could simply "reuse" instead of recreating it within that classroom too.
I also discovered that is was very easy to create an assignment within the classroom. Once I have assignments that are prepared within Google Docs, Slides, or Drawings I can upload and assign them to students within seconds! It is very awesome!
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The ONE downfall that I see...is that I can't create pre-made units. For instance, on Moodle I would have my page set up into units and within those units would be assignments, notes, dropboxes, discussions, etc. They were already to go and put together and if I didn't want students to see them I could "hide" them and open them as we go.
However, I think I can get past that and enjoy all of the other features that Google has to offer that Moodle doesn't: embedding videos, accessibility, instant turn in options, ability to communicate, collaboration, aesthetics, etc. I think I'm going to like Google Classroom!
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