Google Classrooms

Objectives

In this training, learners will:

• Access Google Classroom with their school’s accounts. 

• Navigate through the Google Classroom interface, identify the different tabs in the class, and create new classes. 

• Manage people in the Google Classroom, including adding and removing students and teachers from a class. 

• Post announcements on the class stream with or without attachments. 

• Create topics and arrange class materials within the topics. 

• Create, collect, and return assignments for the whole class or selected students.

Accesing Google Classroom

Accessing without any issues is crucial for you to directly apply and implement the steps in the following tasks of this training. You can access Google Classroom from the Faculty & Staff Dashboard, or through the direct Google Classroom link. 

In any way you choose to access the platform, you will need to sign in to your school's email account.

The Google Classroom Interface

The Google Classroom interface is intuitive and straightforward. It is user-friendly and easy to navigate, which is why the school is using it as its leading platform. You need to be familiar with the Interface so you can efficiently navigate between the different pages. 

 In the screen-cast (9:30 minutes), you can view the different areas of the Google Classroom page. You will also learn how to create a class, navigate the various tabs within the classroom, and change the settings of a single classroom. In the second video, you will simply go through enabling the Google Meet link on Google classroom. 

Managing People in Google Classroom

At the beginning of every academic year, the Technology Department in the school mass creates the classes for all teachers, and mass-enrolls all students within the classes according to their assigned schedules. 

However, during the year, students might move between courses or sections, and it is the responsibility of the teacher to add or remove students accordingly. Teachers are also responsible  to add the different administrative members of the school, such as the principal or the counselor, as teachers to their Google Classes for follow-up and check-in purposes. 

The first video below (2:59 min) demonstrates the different ways of adding students to your classes, and the video next to it (0:59 min) shows you how to add another teacher to your classes. 

Removing students and Teachers

The "Classwork" tab is the most important page for teachers and students. It is where you will have your class content, including materials, topics, students' assignments, quizzes, and questions. Image 1 shows the list of items you can create on the Classwork page. 

Now, we will focus on Organizing your class material through Topics and Material creation. 

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed the heavy use of Google Classroom to communicate with students and provide them with all needed material to ensure their success. Thus, all teachers need to post and organize the courses' material so that students and parents can easily navigate and access it. 

The below video (3:55 min) provides a comprehensive overview of using the Classwork tab to organize and structure your class material. It will show you how to create topics, add materials underneath each topic, and change the order of these topics or materials.

Managing Students' Assignments

The last segment is to learn how to distribute assignments to students. With the additional features within Google Classroom, you are now able to:

• Assign work to the whole class, or to only selected students within the class. 

• Assign work to a single class or to multiple classes at the same time. 

• Add an attachment as Google Docs, Slides, or Sheets, and automatically create a copy for each student for them to edit and submit. 

Important Note about scheduling Assignments and Announcements

Although you have the option to post an announcement for multiple classes at the same time, you CANNOT schedule an announcement when selecting multiple classes. This feature is not yet available. Thus, when you select multiple classes to post an announcement for, you will see that the "Schedule" feature has been disabled as shown in Image 2. 

Accordingly, your either: 

• Schedule a post for each classroom individually, or

• Select multiple classrooms and choose to post the announcement instantly.

Just like in the announcements section, you CANNOT schedule an assignment when selecting multiple classes. This feature is not yet available. Thus, when you select multiple classes to post assignment, you will see that the "Schedule" feature has been disabled as shown in Image 3. 

Accordingly, your either: 

• Schedule an assignment for each classroom individually, or

• Select multiple classrooms and choose to "Assign" the assignment directly.