Google Classroom is Here!

I almost titled this post "Geeking Out Over Google." It would be a totally appropriate title.

Google Classroom was initially going to be by invitation only, and those interested could "apply" to be selected when Google Classroom was launched in mid-September. However, over 100,000 educators expressed interested in being a beta tester, and with the beginning of the school year approaching, Google decided to open it to anyone and to launch it before the beginning of the school year. (It sounds like they got a lot of feedback from teachers about launching a new resource after the beginning of the year. Its tough to change lanes mid-class, so to speak!)

And holy cow, is this a fun tool!

Up front, it is not as powerful as some other classroom dashboards out there, but for someone who is excited about going paperless, this really is the perfect place to start. Its streamlined, is efficient, and because its a Google product, it works seamlessly with Google Drive and other Google Apps for Education (GAFE). And since my school is a GAFE school, all other teachers and students are users and are easily added to my class.  Once my classes are finalized in the next week, I'm going to start setting up classes in Google Classroom, but just to get started, I did set up a test class and it really is so easy.

The part I'm most looking forward to? You can push out assignments as "copies" to your students, so they don't have to copy and move it to their own drive. Then, when they open the file, it will automatically re-name the file with their own username (EX: "Genres of Music" will re-name to "Genres of Music - Lori Evenhouse" upon opening). Then, students can share it with the teacher "For Comment" as they work, and then when its finished, they will click "Turn In" and it will automatically submit to the class teacher and change the student's permission on their unique document to "Can View" instead of "Can Edit." So streamlined! But more information on that to come once my own classes are up and running. After all, one of my Big Ideas is to get comfortable using something on your own before teaching it or implementing it.

Ready to try it for yourself? Go to classroom.google.com and be sure you're signed in with your school GAFE account.

Happy Google-ing!