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Google Classroom ~ My FAVORITE Techie Tool of 2014

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Google Classroom


Google Classroom is by far my favorite Educational Technology Tool of 2014.  Everyday I find another great way to use Google Classroom!  If you have a Google Apps for Education Domain, then you can use Google Classroom.  It was fully released to schools in late August 2014.  By October, Google already had updates to the tool because they listened to all of the teachers using the product and added features that were most requested.

Google Classroom allows teachers to make announcements or assignments through an easy to use Google Drive Management Tool.  As, I was told at Google Headquarters this past July, Google Classroom is not meant to be Learning Management System such as Edmodo, Schoology, Moodle, or Blackboard.  It is supposed to help teachers manage their Google Drive assignments with students.  Teachers can make a template in their Google Drive and then through Google Classroom assign that template to the students by making a copy for each student.  Or, teachers can make an assignment and each student can easily start their won document, presentation, etc. through Google Classroom.  In addition to making assignments through the Google Drive. you can assign students to watch YouTube videos or to go to a specific website.  

When you first set up your Google Classroom, make sure you click "I'm a Teacher" so that you can create classes.  As a teacher you can create classes and join classes. It is a great option to create classes to be used with other teachers for book studies, collaboration on curriculum committees, etc. where the facilitator creates the class and the other teachers join the class.  When creating a class for your students, make sure they click "I'm a Student" when they first go to Google Classroom, which will only allow them to join a class.  If a student clicks the "I'm a Teacher" button, the domain administrator can change that student's permissions back to a student level access.

I'm sure that there will be another update to Google Classroom early in 2015.  Google does listen to the teachers using the product and will continue to make it what teachers need.  The teachers in my district use standards based grading and grade everything on a 4 point scale.  In this scale, there are ".5s".  So, many of the teachers have requested that Google allow the .5 grades in the gradebook side of Google Classroom.  At this time, if you try to give a grade such as 2.5, it reverts back to the whole number of 2.  I am hoping that this feature will be included in their next update.

Overall, there are so many awesome features of Google Classroom, that I had to choose it as my favorite tool of 2014.  If you teach in a Google Apps for Education District and haven't tried Google Classroom yet, please do so soon.  I know that you will love it, and it will change the way you teach.


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