Google Classroom As Presented by Google ISTE2014 ~ A Post on the Fly

Disclaimer:  These posts from ISTE2014 are done on the fly and therefore are subject to mechanical errors etc in an effort to get the information out in a timely manner!  

Jennifer Holland Presents Google Classroom

Jennifer Holland, product manager for Google Classroom showcases Google Classroom at ISTE2014.  The most exciting news of all is that they are promising it will be delivered to Google Apps Edu domains in August!

Creating a classroom takes less than 30 seconds and adding students about the same.

Key concepts/ideas about Classroom:

• Embed YouTube videos for flipping or as a topic starter.  
• When creating an assignment you can push out a document, presentation, etc or simply require the end product that they can submit.  
• You can give students view only or edit by all OR make a copy for each student which names the document with the assignment name and their name!
• You can assign one assignment to multiple sections.
• The submitted product could be any file they can upload from their computer, a link to the web (Glog, YouTube Video, etc), or a Drive file.  
• Teachers can see how many have turned in by logging into the assignment details page.
• When a student turns in the assignment officially, they become 'viewers' of the document.
• Teacher can add comments, apply a score and return to the student so the student can resubmit the document.  
• When students 'turn in' they can add a private note to their teacher.  

What classroom means to me.

Anyone who knows me professionally and personally knows that I am passionate about how Google Edu has given the finest opportunity to improve the quality of education in multiphenomenal ways.    I have been using Bjorn Behrendt's gClass folders and Andrew Stillman's Doctopus to make the process of managing workflow in drive easier!

With Classroom, there will be a plug and play tool, added to your Google Apps Domain that will also make it easier to use the sharing tools in drive and communicate with your students.  You will be able to provide more effective and timely feedback ~ aka formative assessment.  

When I use Google tools (especially Docs, Sheets, and Slides), my students get more timely and higher quality feedback sometimes in real time.  With this in place my goal is that student work will be over 90% accurate by the time they submit for grading.  This makes the learning more engaging and fulfilling.  The process moves more quickly so there are fewer time gaps to draw you students away from the topic!  

Jennifer just described a teacher who differentiated by creating 26+ classrooms for her same grade level class (by proficiency) so she could push out different activities based on where students were at in math, language arts, etc.  #brilliant

Allison Mollica, amtechnology.org