Google Classrooms

Implementation in the Classroom:

To help faciliate introducing Google Classroom into a learning environment, Google has generated two playlists to learn how to use the system! One is student-centered while the other is teacher-centered.

After all of the logistics are understood, then both teachers and students will be ready to learn through Google Classroom!

One way you can use Google Classroom is to setup automated daily agenda announcements. For example, you could prepare your daily announcements on Sunday, and throughout the week at 6am every morning, all students will receive a post for that specific weekday telling them the plan for the day. This, of course, would be useful for homeroom teachers who spend the majority of the day with the same group of students.

Google classrooms can also be used to facilitate assignments. Teachers can create assignment pages on Google Classrooms and have students upload their work onto it. There are multiple advantages to facilitating assignment introductions and assignment submissions through Google classrooms:

• Assignments cannot get lost or "eaten" by the family animal

• Feedback can be given privately to each individual student

• Quick access to each student's work for various assignments and the feedback provided for each assignment

• Student answers to assignments can be quickly reorganized into a spreadsheet with a single button

• Student cumulative grades are automatically calculated

• Students have a larger timeframe with which to submit assignments as they are not constrained to only school hours

How the Tool Enhances Student Learning:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of pathology students chose to facilitate their learning through Google Classroom (Balakrishnan, 2020). Students reported an advantage to using the Google Classroom was the ability to interact with fellow learners not physically in their own regions. It led to sharing of experiences which they normally not would have encountered. 

At the 7-12 grade level, we can consider a similar situation if teaching rotary classes. The use of Google Classroom could allow students who are learning the same material to connect with each other, and share observations which may have been unique to their period of "Math" or "English", so on and so forth.

Nikiforos et al. (2020) performed research on the use of virtual learning communities (VLCs) and the interactions therein, including interactions of bullying. Their major conclusions included:

• Building a VLC takes time

• Teacher's active participation is needed for smooth operation of the VLC

• Bullying occurs mainly in dialogues not related to the project (off-task discussions)

• Inner speech is directly related with VLCs

• Inner speech ratio is related to both the collaboration and quality of works

• Inner speech development improves the coherences of VLCs and prevents aggressive behavior

In other words the effective use of VLCs, such as Google Classroom, is directly related to student's meta-cognitive abilities (the idea of VLCs being correlated to inner speech). Why might this be the case? Perhaps the act of having discussion online, needing to write/type one's thoughts out, allows one to visually see what they wish to communicate, and edit the communication before contributing to the conversation. Perhaps here is also the idea of permanence in an online setting. Chat history can be saved, and videos can be recorded, so students must be more mindful of how they prevent themselves. It again leads to more student reflection.

References

Balakrishnan, R., Singh, K., Harigopal, M., & Fineberg, S. (2020). A novel “Google classroom”-based pathology education tool for trainees during the COVID-19 

pandemic: Impactful learning while social distancing. Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, 144(12), 1445b–11447. https://doi.org/10.5858/arpa.2020-

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Google for Education. (2021). Google classroom: made for teaching. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?

list=PLP7Bvyb3ap47GWhxJQOc3r0ecTcjHgj-J

Google for Education. (2022a). Google classroom: 101 for students. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP7Bvyb3ap45HnQ9o_K3zXpLXr-

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Google for Education. (2022b). Googleclassroom 201 for teachers. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?

list=PLP7Bvyb3ap44RNiWmcLFDivNjjq8tM2Fb

Nikiforos, S., Tzanavaris, S., & Kermanidis, K.-L. (2020). Virtual learning communities (VLCs) rethinking: Collaboration between learning communities. 

Education and Information Technologies, 25(5), 3659–3675. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10132-4