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Does anyone use Google Classroom?


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I'm thinking I may set up ds with this. Anyone use it and have tips, yay/nay, anyhing? I feel kind of stupid even trying, because it doesn't seem to do simple things easily (duplicating blocks of assignments, etc). However it has other features that are great or him, like the ability to be one system for the rest of his years and the ability to grow, embed docs and links, and have all kinds of output. So I'm leary of the tedious parts and excited about the power and contiuity.

Anyone using it? Is there something awfully similar I should be looking at instead? I showed him Trello but he didn't like it.

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My kids are in public school and use it. My son's been using google classroom since 4th classroom, which made the transition last Spring much easier.

(And my daughter's GT teacher had already started them with a taste of it before that part of the year so even for her it was not all new)

 

I love the ease of finding out if there are any assignments coming up that have not been completed. My son struggles with keeping track of assignments, and that part of school has become easier since its gone all online. I don't know how difficult it is for teachers to navigate.

 

I know it is possible for my son to Submit an assignment. The teacher to review, leave comments, and then unsubmit so my son can make changes and resubmit. Etc.

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I use it, primarily to assign documents/videos/websites to my kids, and to post information about their online class (they did a book specific literature class this year)

I'm sure I'm not utilizing it to its full extent yet!

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It's a LMS front end for Google Drive and Chrome, and integrates with notes, slides, etc. 

 

So, for example, For my group drumming class, each week is a topic. Under that topic is the slide show for the skills we are working on, a video recording for those skills, and the songs we are working on, as well as a vocabulary check and an assessment performance piece. The students can then print their music before class, or download it to their device, and have some idea of what we are working on. For those who are motivated by it, they have the material to do the check and can send me their results, done online for the vocab, or recorded on their cell phone and uploaded, and I can give them a result. I do a leveled system (based loosely on recorder karate), and it lets me give kids who don’t necessarily want to play in front of the group 1-1 feedback (for my homeschoolers, it is usually just something they do for fun, but every now and then, I get a parent who really, really wants grades). 
 

For my private students, they have their own individual classroom,  Since no two are doing the exact same thing. However, the real help is that I have a separate one for each book level I teach, divided into lessons and topics. Since almost all my teaching materials are digital, this is a big help, although it took a lot of time to get set up last summer when I started doing it this way. I can then copy the files I want the student to use, as well as them having a digital assignment book and a way to submit theory digitally (which is something that I am requiring this year just to avoid having to pass materials back and forth too much). For my kids who need recordings, I can record myself playing their piece and link it. i use a 3rd party site for my preschoolers that includes sheet music and video lessons, and I can assign just what they need and give them a direct link, and I can mix it with other videos and audio files as well. My students also have a google slides presentation that they use to record their practice, and a shared standings board where they can see how their “team” (ie-all the students who come on a set day) is doing. 
 

Last fall, it was kind of “ok, you’ve got this”, but Many of my students didn’t use it much. What it did do, though, was put everything in one place for me. But when I went online in March, it made a major difference to have it set up and all in one place. I could, for example, pull up a student’s theory while in Zoom and look at it with them easily. And this fall, when we are back in person, but trying to remain socially distant, and parents are not supposed to come into the building, and it seems likely that we will need to go online at some time, having it all digital is a way I can make sure we all have all the information at our fingertips. 
 

My local district uses Google for a lot of things (kids in middle school and up, and this year, elementary has been added have 1-1 chromebooks), so it is comfortable for them to just add my classrooms to their school account. There isn’t another login to remember or anything like that.


 

 

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4 hours ago, vonfirmath said:

My son struggles with keeping track of assignments

Yup, the sheer EF of paper and books means I have to do it, which holds him back. I'm hopig he can accomplish more with the structure.

1 hour ago, dmmetler said:

is a big help, although it took a lot of time to get set up last summer when I started doing it this way.

Yes, there's definitely effort to set it up. I'm hopng it's worth it in te long run.

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I'm not sure what we use for really little ones at school. My younger kids wouldn't be able to manage the regular paper assignment pages by themselves unless they were very advanced readers, so for them, I think Google Classroom is more for the parent. There is supposed to be an LMS coming out for the digital materials I use for preschool and early beginners, but since I also use a book series, I don't know if it will allow me to assign materials outside their program. It's supposed to integrate with GC. I'll probably test it this year.

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1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

Well I need to see what happens on ds' end wen he clicks assignment as completed, etc., but so far it looks pretty good. I got tasks for a semester of independent work added, whew!

If you are doing a semester at a time,I suggest scheduling the tasks so it doesn't look like a wall of work on day 1. One really nice thing is that if you have notifications set up on Google calendar, you can even get scheduled tasks on a Fitbit or other fitness tracker-great for folks with EF issues. 

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45 minutes ago, dmmetler said:

If you are doing a semester at a time,I suggest scheduling the tasks so it doesn't look like a wall of work on day 1. One really nice thing is that if you have notifications set up on Google calendar, you can even get scheduled tasks on a Fitbit or other fitness tracker-great for folks with EF issues. 

Well what I'm playing around with is having everything in topics but only pulling up the things he needs into days. We'll see if it works. I guess you're right it's kinda ugly. I wasn't wanting to deal with dates and scheduling and all that, sigh, so I was just physically moving things. My idea was to have Alpha/Beta/Gamma/Delta/Epsilon/Zeta days and just refill them. That way we can just put the letter of the day on the board and he knows what to work. That way no issues if a lost day, whatever. So sort of looping the days, I guess you could say.

I hadn't thought about pushing tasks to other tech, hmm, interesting. Going in the back of my brain somewhere, lol. 

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I use it to teach classes.

I... am less keen on it as a tool for my own kids. The work to set it up for a dozen students remote to me is obviously worth it. And they can turn things in to me with it. Also useful. For my kids to organize their work, it would be a hassle that wouldn't be worth it. But I assume it would depend on what sort of work you're assigning. And who is doing the assigning for that matter.

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46 minutes ago, Farrar said:

For my kids to organize their work, it would be a hassle that wouldn't be worth it

Well I guess we'll see what happens! I'm probably going to try him today on it. I don't plan on ptting any of the stuff *I* d with him onto it. It's just his independent work for now. 

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I use it for the math classes I am teaching online. 

For my own son, I use Evernote. The free version can be accessed on two different devices and syncs automatically. Each week there is a new note with his assignments for the week. It's easy to put links to websites or Google docs and such. You can add check boxes as well. 

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I love teaching using google classroom!  My only tip: some students (those with kid accounts on google) may have trouble accessing links to certain videos or games.  I try to encourage all my students to sign-in using a parent's account.

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2 hours ago, Plink said:

I love teaching using google classroom!  My only tip: some students (those with kid accounts on google) may have trouble accessing links to certain videos or games.  I try to encourage all my students to sign-in using a parent's account.

I actually send the link to the parent on their e-mail. If the parent wants to add the child too, we can-but COPPA really limits under 13 accounts. 

Edited by dmmetler
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3 hours ago, Plink said:

I love teaching using google classroom!  My only tip: some students (those with kid accounts on google) may have trouble accessing links to certain videos or games.  I try to encourage all my students to sign-in using a parent's account.

Yeah I made an email under his name, put in his age, and now none of my LINKS work because stupid youtube says everything has to go through youtube kids!! And I actually like the concept of youtube kids, but I don't like the idea of redoing my links. 

Youtube kids has captions on automatically and it's theoretically safer. But yeah, that was a mess I hadn't anticipated. That's a good point that I can just make a parent account to sign in if I want. We'll see.

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On 8/18/2020 at 3:22 PM, PeterPan said:

Yeah I made an email under his name, put in his age, and now none of my LINKS work because stupid youtube says everything has to go through youtube kids!! And I actually like the concept of youtube kids, but I don't like the idea of redoing my links. 

Youtube kids has captions on automatically and it's theoretically safer. But yeah, that was a mess I hadn't anticipated. That's a good point that I can just make a parent account to sign in if I want. We'll see.

If you make a second student account under a parent e-mail, make sure everything is assigned to all students or to both accounts. That way he can use that account and still turn in work. 

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