google offers schools "classroom"

[Anonymous]

At our school, we had been using Edmodo, which is a dynamic system, that is currently being updated to add more support for the common core. Recently, a number of teachers moved to Jupiter and Juno which provides forum for discussions, allow student to "talk" with one another, take test independently, provides for parents' comments and input. In the past, I have found Google Docs to be difficult to use, and confusing to "teach" to students.
LBG

[Anonymous]

I sincerely hope that this project kicks the proprietary nightmare, Blackboard out of our school systems. The open source solution to Blackboard, "Moodle" just hasn't been able to garner the attention of school teachers and administrators it needs to be a contender in that market. Maybe with the Google brand on this, it might start a foothold.

Seems to have worked for Chromebooks.

[Anonymous]

This sounds promising, but like lguthrie states, google has a long way to go in making their products student friendly and for that matter teacher friendly. I'm interested at looking at Juno and Jupiter

[Anonymous]

I have just started using Google Classroom! And I LOVE it. I am an English teacher and if there is any way I can streamline my paperwork, I will take advantage of it. I have created 5 classrooms for the 5 classes that I teach. You can either invite your students to join or give them a code where they will use to join your classroom. As a teacher, you can create assignments and assign the assignments to the students. You can see their work as they're working on it through GoogleDrive. You can provide immediate feedback as their documents are immediately shared with you. Once a student has completed his/her assignment, he/she will click on "Turn In." That'll take care of it from the student's side. You will see the student's submitted work, read it, grade it, input the grade and hit "Return." Once you hit return, the grade along with your comments will be seen by that student. Additionally, another benefit is that the students can post comments in the Announcements asking for help or offering to help. This is such a great way for students to get assistance quickly and for the teacher to only have to answer the same questions ONCE! It is really easy to set up. It took me less than 10 minutes to set up all of my classes including inviting all of my students. I have been using GoogleDrive for the past 5 years and I am ecstatic that Google has Google Classroom. It has made my life so much easier by organizing all the folders neatly in my Drive and enabling me to grade and submit feedback to my students quickly. I highly recommend this!

[Anonymous]

From reading the reviews, Google Classroom sounds like a great tool for online communication with your students as it allows you to post assignments online and provide instant feedback. Im wondering if it is geared more towards older students. I teach kindergarten, so it may not work with the age of my students but can serve as a tool for a forum for their parents. I will need to do more research and verify if it will benefit the needs of my classroom.

[Anonymous]

I think Edmodo and Google Classroom are a great idea to communicate with parents and students. It saves time to post online in lieu of creating a weekly letter that you wait in line to use the copy machine that is over-heated when it's your turn to copy. Once the copy machine cools down, you find that you have "maxed" out your copy account before it completes copying a class set of your weekly letter, and you still have to pass out the paper or stuff them into the famous weekly folder. However, how do these teachers using Edmodo and Google Classroom deal with the digital divide?

[clay dube]

From Google's blog -- an invitation to teachers. Have any of you used "Classroom" -- if so, please offer your assessment of it. For those who use other tools to have students submit work, evaluate each other's work, etc., please do let us know what you see as advantages/disadvantages to those tools.
Thanks -- clay

Previewing a new Classroom
Posted: 06 May 2014 09:09 AM PDT
As a former high school math teacher, I know all too well that teachers spend a ton of valuable time doing things other than teaching—waking up early to grade quizzes, collecting and returning piles of paper assignments, and battling copy machine paper jams. But with today’s technology it doesn’t have to be this way. Many teachers and professors have found ways to use technology to be better educators and avoid busy work. We spent the past year working closely with many educators to understand the systems they use to simplify their workloads, so they can get back to doing what they love—teaching.

Today, in honor of Teacher Appreciation Day, we’re announcing a preview of Classroom, a new, free tool in the Google Apps for Education suite. It helps teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease. Classroom is based on the principle that educational tools should be simple and easy to use, and is designed to give teachers more time to teach and students more time to learn.

With Classroom, you'll be able to:

§ Create and collect assignments: Classroom weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly. They can quickly see who has or hasn't completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback to individual students.
§ Improve class communications: Teachers can make announcements, ask questions and comment with students in real time—improving communication inside and outside of class.
Stay organized: Classroom automatically creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student. Students can easily see what’s due on their Assignments page.

We know that protecting your students’ privacy is critical. Like the rest of our Apps for Education services, Classroom contains no ads, never uses your content or student data for advertising purposes, and is free for schools.
Starting today, teachers and professors can apply for a preview of Classroom. Based on the requests we receive, we’ll be inviting a limited number of educators to try Classroom in about a month. By September, Classroom will be available to any school using Google Apps for Education. Since we want to make sure Classroom plays well with others, if you’re a developer or partner, sign up to learn more about integrating with Classroom.

We’ve been working with more than a dozen pilot schools and universities to try out Classroom and provide feedback—and we can’t thank them enough. We can’t wait to hear your feedback, and to work together to make Classroom even better.

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Manager, Classroom
edited by Clay Dube on 7/23/2014

[Anonymous]

I guess for certain schools, there are computer carts available where teachers can check them out and use them in the classroom. For me, I check out a cart and get students started on Google Classroom. We start every assignment in class and students finish at home. When we're talking about digital divide, we have to inform students of different resources that are available to students without access at home. At my school, the library (with laptops) is open 4/5 days a week. It is also open during lunch. Any local public library has computers and internet service that students can easily use. If you make it a point to use Google Classroom or any type of technology, you have to give students a list of where they can go if they don't have access at home. So far, I haven't had any problems with students turning work in via GoogleClassroom.

[Author]

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