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Google Classroom Update email sent August 8, 2018
Google Classroom Update email sent August 8, 2018
Good Evening Kays!!!
I hope that you have had a wonderful summer and are as excited to meet your new students and start the 2018-19 school year as I am!!
Google Classroom had a major update happen on Tuesday, August 7th. These changes, for the most part, are amazing and affect only newly created classes. Let’s get into those changes now!
As soon as you create a new class, you’re going to see that it is different. The names of the tabs have changed. Gone is the About tab (more on that later), now we have the Classwork and People tabs.
The Stream tab is now more streamlined. This is where you will create announcements, such as ‘Don’t forget the field trip next week!,’ ‘Romeo and Juliet permission slips need to be turned by Thursday to watch the movie,’ or ‘Next Wednesday is a half-day, you will have only afternoon classes that day!’ Assignments will appear as little announcements here, letting students know that they have a new assignment. As with the old Stream, everything appears in reverse chronological order, with the newest items on top and the oldest on the bottom. Older students are comfortable with this, as it mimics Facebook and other forms of social media.
The Classwork tab, which is where students will now find their assignments, is organized by topic. As you create and post assignments and questions, they will be sorted into their topic and will then be in chronological order, with the first item being on top and the last on the bottom. We do have the ability to rearrange these by clicking the three dots and moving them up or down, same goes for the topics.
The People Tab is the old Students or Classmates tab, and where you will find your students. This tab is also where you will add any co-teachers that you want to add. I highly recommend that you add your evaluator and/or grade level admin as a co-teacher to your classes. This provides them with the opportunity to see what is happening in your class and to have targeted conversations with you about projects and student participation. Look for the ‘Add a Person’ head to add both students and adults to your class.
Now, let’s talk about that missing About tab. This is the feature that I’m not happy about. In classes that you have already created it, it has been removed as well. I have requested that they bring it back, and will continue to ask for it to be brought back. Until then we will have to deal with it. So far we have two options, one is better than the other, but still not the best. Option 1, add the class materials as an Announcement so they appear in the Stream. Since you cannot bring this to the top it will eventually sink to the bottom. Not the best. Option 2 (better than option 1), is to add a topic to the Classwork tab called ‘Class Materials.’ You can then add all of your materials here such as your syllabus, Getting to Know You slide deck, links to frequently used websites, Classroom procedures, lab manual, and more. These materials will need to be added as assignments though that are ungraded. There is an About button on the banner. This opens up a pop-up that gives the details of the class, its name, section, subject matter, and class code.
Speaking of class code, you can also find this in the Settings wheel. Just like in Google Forms, Classroom now has a settings wheel. In this wheel is where you will find several useful and random pieces of the Google Classroom puzzle.
One of the BEST new features is that it is much easier to grade student work and provide feedback to that work! We can also create a custom feedback bank!!! See the video at this link to see what this looks like.
The Google Classroom team is still working to improve this product and there are more changes coming. Here is a great blog post from Google on the current update and on what is still to come!
There are so many other things that I can’t wait to share with you, but it is time for this Tech Specialist to head to bed! Tomorrow is another full day of training for me, cannot wait to meet all of our new teachers!!! Please be sure to welcome them and help them find their way as a new Kay!!
Until tomorrow, sleep well Kays!
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