With the recent hike in the Google classroom users, it has hit a huge mark of 150 million users. Through Google Classroom, or GC, Google has minimized the struggle of teachers and students. Every teacher can create a separate room/class for the students, which they can join through a code. They can then assign classwork, homework, assignments, quizzes, etc. Students can then easily read and submit the assigned works within time.
Some students like it, but it might increase the confusion of others. Here are a few tips to help students get comfortable using google classroom features.
Make Google Classroom Easier For Students
Naming, numbering, and creating tabs
Google classroom is clean and good initially but gets confusing after a lot of activity. Over time, your lecture content, slides, and announcements can spread all over the thread. This can confuse your students. That’s why you should organize your topics by naming and numbering them. Furthermore, Google classroom allows you to make separate tabs for different topics or units. It helps in avoiding confusion and smooth workflow.
Gabrielle Wayman states, “Go with Google Classroom!”. When they looked for an organized, easy-to-use digital environment, they chose Google Classroom and were satisfied with it.
However, it also depends on the particular teacher. If the teacher utilizes all the necessary features of the application, students will learn easily and efficiently. Otherwise, it will confuse and exhaust them.
Therefore, teachers should use all Google classroom features.
- Customize the display picture of the class to increase the students’ interest.
- Hold and drag important and urgent topics to the top. This way, the students will pay attention to what’s necessary and urgent.
- Convey lecture content in all the available ways like google drive files, pdf, links, YouTube videos, etc.
Take questions from your students
Take feedback and questions regarding the class from your students. Google classroom has features of public comments where students will leave their questions. Answer those questions in the public comment section so all the students will read and learn.
Private Feedback
Google classroom also has an option of private comments. Teachers and students can both provide private feedback or ask questions. It resolves the problem between the learner and educator without involving them in other discussions of the class or wasting time.
Help Students with Google Calendar
Google calendar is integrated into the Google classroom. Teachers must use this fantastic feature to schedule classes and meetings with the students and their parents. Teachers have the option to select the date, day, plan, and time of the meeting beforehand. It helps in the smooth organization of the meeting through google meet and helps avoid inconveniences.
How Google Classroom improves students’ learning
Many shy students who would avoid discussions in on-campus classes actively participate in online class discussions. Students feel more confident in online classes because they feel a bit informal than in on-campus classes. They easily express their views in public and private comment sections of the Google Classrooms.
Books and Notes in Soft form
Nonetheless, those days are long gone when students liked actual books and notebooks. Today, they prefer books and notes in soft form because they are easy to carry and can be read anytime, anywhere.
Google Classroom allows teachers to share lectures, interesting slideshows, or study-related YouTube videos with students. They don’t need to write every sentence by themselves. General information or facts can be copied and pasted, saving time for both; teachers and students. Teachers can utilize that time to improve their teaching skills or increase interaction with their students.
Similarly, students don’t have to note down everything in their notebooks. The lectures and other study-related material are already stored in one place in the Google Classroom. Everything uploaded to the class is directed to a particular google drive folder. All students have access to that study material. It allows them to read and study instead of repeatedly writing those lectures or notes.
Google Classroom: All in one place
You may know about teachers’ administrative issues. They possess a bundle of papers every time, including lecture content, general material, students’ assignments, and exam papers. Organizing those papers is a hectic job and consumes much of their time. Some papers can be lost too during organizing, counting, or grading.
Google classroom’s “create assignment” or “quiz assignment” feature solves these problems. A teacher can assign, collect, check, add feedback, grade, and return the assignment or quiz in one place. The teacher doesn’t need to think about organizing or carrying a bundle of paper. It gives them the time and relaxation to comfortably check the assignments or quizzes and then get back to the students.
Through this feature, google classroom relaxes students from running to classes or finding teachers’ offices to submit their assignments. They can comfortably complete their work and submit it in the tab created by the respective teacher.
Add comments
When students submit their assignments or quizzes through google docs, teachers can add comments within the files. While reading an assignment, the teacher can highlight and add a comment on a particular line. It can be a regarding a mistake, a plagiarized sentence, or just an addition to the student’s work.
After adding your comments and grading, you can send the document back for the student to see the mistakes and deficiencies in the work.
This way, the students may reflect on their work and improve.
Final thoughts
Over 150 million educators and learners have adopted Google Classroom as a digital learning space. It offers various features for making remote learning easy and comfortable. Along with a simple interface, Google classroom integrates multiple apps like meet, docs, google slides, and google drive to provide an efficient and hassle-free learning environment. Teachers can organize their classes by using multiple features of the google classroom like creating topics, assigning assignments, and conducting quizzes. They can collect and grade them all in one place, avoiding all the struggle of physical papers. By utilizing all features of google classroom, teachers can make the environment comfortable for students.
About Safe Doc
Safe Doc is a chrome extension that makes it easy for schools to manage Google Workspace for Education (formerly G Suite for Education) features that Google Admin Console doesn't provide. Safe Doc protects your students from inappropriate content and prevents your students from misusing certain features to disrupt classrooms.
