What is Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a free web service developed by Google for schools that aims to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments in a paperless way. The primary purpose of Google Classroom is to streamline sharing of files between teachers and students.
Classwork Page in Classroom
- The Classwork page is where teachers create, collect and grade assignments.
- Teachers organize short informational posts and student work on this page by topic. Assignments can be added to the Classwork page from Google Drive, YouTube, or created directly in Classroom.
- Students can also attach photos and create “drawings” via Google Docs (which are linked to shareable images).
Benefits of Google Classroom
1. Easy to Use
Google Classroom only requires users to have a Gmail account. After signing in, they can directly access their digital classroom. Teachers create a class and add students using their Gmail accounts while students simply accept the invitation to join a class. Once enrolled, teachers can easily distribute handouts and assignments to their students through email or saved on Google Drive; this eliminates the need to print all materials, which saves printing costs and makes it more eco-friendly.
2. Increased productivity
With a reliable internet connection, teachers and students can communicate in real time via emails or chat anytime anywhere. This has been proven to improve learning outcomes as it increases student participation and reduces absenteeism since they can participate even at home through mobile devices such as laptops or smartphones. They can also access past lessons or assignments with just one click when needed for review purposes
3. Paperless
Go paperless with assignments, quizzes, and assessments. Students can keep track of what’s due on the Assignments page and begin working with just a click. Teachers can quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback and grades.
4. Automated
Classroom helps you get more done. Quickly create classes, distribute assignments, communicate and stay organized, all in one place.
Teachers can create and collect assignments paperless, including time-saving features like the ability to automatically make a copy of a Google Document for each student. It’s easy to see which students have or haven’t completed the work, and you can streamline your grading workflow by looking at everything in one place.
5. Save time
Classroom saves time and makes it easy to create classes, distribute assignments, communicate, and stay organized.
Teachers can quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback and grades right in Classroom. Students can keep track of what’s due on the Assignments page and begin working with just a click. Google Classroom also automatically creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student to help keep everyone organized.
Students can be invited to join a class through a private code, or automatically imported from a school domain. Once in classes, students can find all the different assignments “streamed” in chronological order on their personal page, along with course materials provided by their teacher and announcements (which also show up as emails). Teachers can quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the work, and give direct and private feedback on each assignment.
The service also allows teachers to monitor how much time students are spending on each assignment – which could help them track how long pupils spend on homework.
Features of Google Classroom
Google Classroom has a range of features designed specifically for managing student assessments and feedback; these include;
- Real-time collaboration
Ability to provide real-time feedback on assignments including audio/video comments.
- Classwork page
Easily see what’s due on the classwork page and access each assignment from the stream or the classwork page.
- Google Drive integration
Attach files from Drive to provide rich feedback to students. Students can submit homework effortlessly and teachers can comment directly on their work.
- Quizzes
Post questions from Google Forms (with answers) in Classroom. This is a great way to introduce new topics and get immediate feedback about student understanding.
- Documents
Students can collaborate on documents in real-time. Teachers can grade student work, add comments and share the finished product with students, parents, or other teachers.
- Classroom newsfeed
In addition to assignments and quizzes, teachers can post links to articles, videos, and other content that is related to their class curriculum.
- File sharing
Teachers and students can see all of their files stored in Drive without leaving Classroom.
Recommended Reading: 15 Major Benefits of Using Google Sheets
Key Point
Students can keep track of what’s due on the Assignments page and begin working with just a click. Teachers can quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback and grades right in Classroom.
Conclusion
Google Classroom is a very easy-to-use tool that lets teachers and students easily connect with one another. With Google Classroom, students can create their own home pages where they can follow lessons, submit assignments and journals, and check in on grades. The best part is that there isn’t a lot of setup involved which makes it very easy for any teacher to start using this website to teach a class.
