Five Things You Should Know Before Using Google Classroom

If you are considering using Google Classroom as a part of your courses, here are five essential things you will want to know.

1. Google Classroom is a black box

Maintaining regular communication with parents is a constant challenge for teachers. Other online platforms I have used in the past made the arduous task of keeping 80+ parents informed on what is going on in their child's class a simple task. I could send parents a link the my course calendar, website, or wiki and that was the end of my effort. Google Classroom does not allow this to happen. You won't even be able to share Classroom with your colleagues or student success teachers without adding them as a student. I understand that privacy is the central driver behind this policy, but in my opinion, this will prevent Classroom from receiving mass adoption.

2. Google Classroom is not a course management system.

If you are looking for a place to set up units and prepare folders of resources ahead of time, Google Classroom is not for you; Google Drive is definitely for you, but not Google Classroom. Drive will allow you to set up files for units and plan resources ahead of time. If you want your students to have access to all of your files from day one you can share the folder with your students. You could share the folder on Classroom, but do not think of Classroom as a course website, but rather as a Facebook news feed or a Google stream.

3. Google Classroom is all about the here and now.

Google Classroom's Stream will make it easy for students to find exactly what they need for a particular moment in time. The teacher needs to update the Stream often so that the relevant information for class that day is at the top of the stream, ready to go. If you are in a one-to-one device environment, this can help simplify your day significantly.

This focus on the present can also cause issues. If, like me, you are planning on using Google Classroom daily you may find the format of the Stream frustrating. Throughout a unit I will provide information sheets and links that students need to access throughout the next couple of weeks. This information quickly gets pushed down the stream and ends up requiring scrolling and page refreshing (which has recently resulted in the page automatically scrolling all of the way to the top) to find exactly what a student needs. Students could "make a copy" of each information sheet, or copy links into their bookmarks, but in reality, this will almost never happen.

4. Assessment in Google Classroom will not work for everyone.

My single biggest frustration, and one of the key selling feature of Classroom, is its handling of assessment files. What I do like is that you are able to send assignment sheets to students with only a few clicks and that you can send a copy of that assignment to each student where it is stored in a folder in their Drive.

The key issue I have is that evaluating the work when it is finished is tailored to a very specific form of assessment. The built in assessment functionality only lets you mark the assignment based on an overall average or point system. Our school system marks with a 4 category, 5 scale rubric. There is no way to set a rubric as a marking schema, and if you do not attach the rubric when you originally create the assignment (perhaps you are co-creating your rubric with the students) you are not able to edit the assignment and add the rubric with the option of giving it to every student.

If, like in my department, you have students hand in work, provide feedback for improvement (without a mark), and then give students time to make changes and resubmit for summative marking, your assignment inbox in Classroom will become a disaster. Material will be listed as done, returned, and resubmitted. Because of this, my ability to comment or add items to their assignment sheets becomes a mixed up mess of commenting and 'making suggestions'. A little more versatility and the ability for teachers to end an assignment would make assessment much more functional for many teachers. 

5. Google Classroom's usefulness is dependent on your use of Google Apps for Education.

If you find that you use a wide range of websites, online tools, and applications, you may find Google Classroom is just another site you need to maintain. But, if you use Google Docs as well as the many other Google Apps, Google Classroom is the place for you. The ease of sharing Docs assignment sheets with each of your students and the ability to easily track who has submitted what and when by looking at the submission history, makes this a great tool. It also makes it very easy to share course content, whether it be a youtube video, a link to a webpage, or a variety of handouts and slideshows. Students will have no good excuse for not finding everything they need.

Gallery Tour Feed Back

A particular challenge that I face as an English teacher, which is further exacerbated by technology, is getting students out of their desks and moving around. I decided this week to incorporate some movement into my class while still using the available technology.

My Grade 10 academic students are working on creating an advertisement for a not-for-profit organization known as Give Them Light. This charity came to their attention after we watched the film Blood Brother. Students were tasked with completing some inquiry questions on what makes a good ad completed through the analysis of not-for-profit advertising focussing on the same issues depicted in the film. Students were then challenged to create their own advertisement for Give Them Light by connecting their analysis, our work on logic, and the character virtues they have been assigned to explore.

To get them out of their seats, students were put in groups and assigned a section of chalkboard in the room. Here the groups identified the success criteria for an effective ad. After 5 minutes, students rotated around the room looking at what other groups had identified. As a class we then co-created a Google Doc listing the most common aspects from the various lists.

We then went to the computer lab (I was monopolizing tech this day). Students pulled up their advertisements on the computer screen and left their device (iPad or Chromebook) on the desk in front open to a blank Google Doc. The class then rotated around the room providing feedback to students based on the success criteria identified in class. This allowed for a great amount of feedback in a short amount of time. Not only did each person receive feedback from 26 people, but they were able to see what others had done in order to learn what they could change in their ad to make it stronger. Finally, the success criteria we created allows me to better tailor my rubric to their understanding of the material covered in class, allowing for a more authentic assessment of what was learned, not what I thought they might learn.

This type of gallery tour could also be easily recreated online without the necessity of two computers each. Simply create and share a Google Slideshow, allow students to upload their ad to a slide, and then use the commenting or speaker notes functionality to do a virtual tour and have students provide feedback.

The physical gallery tour did allow students to get up and move around and also created a bit of excitement as students would group around particularly strong ads and comment out loud.

Classroom Functionality Update

Looks like Google has added some additional functionality to Classroom. There have been three changes that I have noticed so far.

1. Teachers now have access to a toggle switch in Stream to hide or show deleted items. 

• This would have been extremely valuable to me when I accidentally deleted an assignment in Classroom. I had to create another version of the assignment, which lead to multiple copies of assignment sheets and lots of confusion.
2. There are additional functions within the "Student" page. At the top of the page you can change permissions to allow students to comment in Classroom or to prevent all, or a few, students from commenting. It is labelled as muting students. If only this worked in the physical world as well.

• You can now also send group emails by clicking the check box beside the students for whom you want the message sent and selecting "email" from the drop-down menu.
3. Document permissions have also changed. If you create a document in a Google app and want to share, you now need to click on "Advanced" to change general permissions.

• Within this menu, you can be even more selective and allow certain Classrooms editing privileges whereas other Classrooms may only have commenting or viewing privileges. 
• I am very excited about this change. With two sections of grade 12 English I can have students from one class comment on work created in the other without the fear of things being changed or deleted. More to come on this.
• The only downside to the change in privileges is it does add another step if you just want to make a document editable or comment-able to all students. 

More than anything, it is great to see that Google is following through on their promise to roll out more features are they become available.

Google Classroom- Six Week Progress Report

As our students receive their week-six interim report cards, I think it's also time to assess my first six weeks with Google Classroom.

Achievement- Satisfactory

Strengths

• Classroom is a much nicer user interface than Google Drive previously provided.
• The real-time nature of Classroom's Stream provides a valuable way to share learning goals with attached media and documents.
• This is particularly useful for teachers who are in a one-to-one device environment, as well as for students who are absent on a particular day.
• The Assignment functionality within Stream makes giving and receiving assignments of all
  types of media easy, as well as makes checking progress a one click task.
• The "Students" page allows for easy email communication between the teacher and students.
• The "About" page allows for easy setup of course material for which students need regular access.
• The ability to share Announcements and Assignments with multiple "Classrooms" improves workflow and cuts down on copying.
• The user interface makes it easy for students to find what they are suppose to be looking for. There are no distractions, just the work and information a teacher wants them to have.
• The tight integration with Google Apps For Education is the only key differentiator of this product and unless a teacher fully integrates Google into their classroom, Classroom may not have broad enough appeal to be useful to him/her.

Weaknesses

• There is NO WAY to share your Classroom Stream with people outside of your GAFE domain. 
• For me, one of the greatest benefits of the connected classroom has been the ability to keep parents informed about what is happening in their child's course with little effort actually required on my part. Classroom does not allow this.
• Privacy concerns can be dealt with easily by removing user names from the view of people outside of the GAFE domain. This is no excuse for putting my course in a black box!
• Even if I wanted to show my colleagues how I am using Classroom I can't unless I add them as a student (which means they show up as incomplete assignments) or I log in and show them. The inability to allow Student Success teachers access makes supporting my students much more difficult.
• Classroom needs an automatic "Notebook" folder created for students.
• Much like how the teacher can set an assignment to "Make a Copy for Each Student", attaching documents to an Announcement needs the same functionality. One of my classes still refer to a handout given on September 4th, which requires several pages of scrolling to access. Hoping students will "make a copy" of information sheets and file them properly is not terribly practical.
• The real-time nature of Classroom can cause problems. There have been numerous times when Classroom has not been available or is extremely slow to load.

• Although occasionally this is the fault of the wifi hub, there have been many times over the past six weeks where I have not been able to access the Stream or Assignments despite having robust wifi.
• Customizability is extremely limited.
• The inability to rearrange the order of Announcements within the Stream or the About page may require you to delete and repost items if you need to add something extra.
• The About page, or side bars of Stream, would be infinitely more valuable if you were able to add gadgets like Calendar, in order to provide easy access for students. Unless it is in their face or you stand over them, many will not remember to check a second site for the class calendar.
• Classroom seems to have been designed by people who were trying to remember what their teacher did when they were students.
• The inability to attach documents to a student's assignment submission is frustrating. If a student has turned in their written work, there is no way for the teacher to attach a video of their presentation after the fact.
• There is no way to create Announcement or Assignment posts ahead of time. This creates extra steps and documents if a teacher needs or wants to plan ahead. 
• On a picky note, Google calling their service "Classroom" makes it very difficult to talk about in and outside of class. Telling students to go to Classroom, or submit it in Classroom has already lead to some confusion.

Next Steps

• Create a "Notebook" functionality as mentioned above.
• Allow outsiders a way to see what is going on in Classroom. 
• Give the teacher the option to break down the black box.
• Improve server support. 
• Many times I see the "Oops! This is taking longer than it should" message. This message only means something if it doesn't appear more often than not.
• Allow for greater customization. 
• Even the ability to change font size within the Announcements would be a vast improvement. Students can't read what an Announcement says if Classroom is on the Smart Board.
• Create some reusability functionality in order to make Classroom useful to a teacher teaching the course a second time. 
• I would suggest being able to reverse the timeline when a course is done to allow easy reference the next semester/year.
• Maintain a positive attitude, Classroom. You have made excellent first steps, but the only way to learn how to do better is to listen and act upon the feedback from your teachers.

Group Work Dynamics Tracking

One of the challenges I have with assessment is providing accurate and supportable evaluation of learning skills. In our board, learning skills are not suppose to be assessed as part of a student's term mark. If we are assessing knowledge, that assessment should be solely based on the student's knowledge and not whether they miss the first ten minutes

of class every, single, day. The obvious issues with that aside, my department has been working on developing a method for effectively tracking one of the key learning skills; that being, a student's ability to work effectively in a group, which we assess as either excellent, good, satisfactory, or needs improvement.

The challenge is that most of our record keeping, and time, is focussed on formative and summative assessment that is used to inform a student's mark in the course. So how can we use technology to better support the learning skills evaluation and inform our teaching practices all without adding a significant amount of additional paper work?

What I have done to help is modify a chart that has been developed by my department head and department members (who borrowed the idea from somewhere long ago), over the last few years. The chart is used to identify group dynamics when working in teams.

The issue that I have had with this chart is that when a completed chart is given to students they rarely look at it and they certainly do not keep it long enough to help in their next group work situation. And to be honest, when I use the chart with the intention of keeping it as support for report cards, I have misplaced them more than once.

By creating a Google Form, I am able to fill in the chart for each group and provide them access to the results spreadsheet. This allows them to receive immediate feedback that they can then refer to either the next day or later in the semester and reflect on how they can improve. This feedback is then also available for me when I am providing comments on report cards. Not only can I provide feedback, but because Google Forms can be set to automatically collect the respondents Google Ed email address, I can have groups self-evaluate and know the source of the insights, which in turn helps me better understand the disparity between what I see and what the students think they are doing.

This Group Work Tracking form is going to be particularly useful in a new, upcoming unit in my grade 12 English course where the students will be working on a team project for four weeks while they plan a pro surfing tour stop. The groups will receive daily feedback, be given time to reflect on the feedback at the beginning of each class, and the group-assigned project manager that week will be responsible for developing feedback as well. Not only will this Google Form allow me to make more informed decisions for report cards, but it will be a useful teaching tool that allows for hands-off learning opportunities.