Welcome back to my channel, and if you are new here, I am so happy that you found

me. My name is Michelle Ferre. I am a fourth grade teacher in Maryland, and I also
serve as my school's eCoach, which means I help teachers integrate educational
technology into their classrooms. For today's episode of EdTech Made Easy, I wanted
to give you all a tutorial for how to get started with Google Classroom, along with
giving you all some tips and tricks for using it with your teaching. If you have
never heard of Google Classroom, it is a service that allows you to share files,
create assignments, grade assignments, and communicate with your students in a
paperless way. The good news is that Google Classroom is completely free. The bad
news, however, is that your school or district does have to sign up for a G Suite
for Education account in order to use it with students. Now your school or district
can sign up for free and the G Suite for Education account will help to ensure
additional privacy and security for students. So if your school or district is not
already signed up, definitely share this information with them and hopefully they
will be willing to sign up once they see all the amazing features Google Classroom
has to offer. Now I'm going to link the Google Classroom website down in the
description box, that way you can open it up and follow along with me as I go
through this tutorial. The first thing you need to do is create your class. Now,
depending on what you teach, you may only need to create one class or you may wanna
create different classes for each subject you teach or each group of students you
teach. In order to create a class, you are going to click on the plus sign in the
upper right corner and then click on Create Class. If your school does not already
have a G Suite for Education account, you will be prompted with a message asking
your school or district to sign up for one before you use the service with
students. You will then enter the class name, section, subject, and room number,
but the only part that's actually required is the class name. I really like to
include my personal name in the class, such as Ms. Frey's math class, since my
students do join multiple classes through Google Classroom and I don't want them to
get confused on which is which. Once you are done entering the information, you
will click on create class and you will then be redirected to the classes page.
Before we navigate this page, I do want to talk to you all about how to have
students join your class once you have created it. You can individually add
students to the class by clicking on the people tab at the top and then clicking
the invite students button next to the student heading. You can then enter your
students email address to individually add them to the class. However, a much
easier way to do this is actually have the students join your class on their own.
Under your class name, you will see a class code, which is an assortment of
different letters and numbers. In order to join your class, students will go to
Google Classroom and click on the plus sign in the upper right hand corner. Instead
of clicking create class, students will click join class and then type in your
personal class code. You can display your class code in a larger size by clicking
on the display button next to the class code. The good news is once a student joins
your class once, it will always appear in their Google Classroom until you either
remove the student from the class or archive the class. Now let's go ahead and jump
into the features of the class page. First of all, you can change the theme, which
will change up the colors and the images by clicking on the select theme button in
the rectangle surrounding your class name. You can either use one of the pre-
created themes offered through Google or you can use a personalized photo by
clicking on upload photo and then choosing the photo from your computer. I
personally really like to have a different color or theme for each one of my
classes to help me differentiate between them. The default tab is the stream tab.
The stream tab houses all of the activity that has taken place within your
classroom, such as any announcements or assignments you have posted as a teacher
and any comments or posts from students, if you allow them, with the most recent
appearing at the top. You can easily post announcements or add attachments to the
stream page by clicking in the share with your class box. You can either type a
message to your students, you can attach files from your computer or Google Drive,
you can add YouTube videos or add links and then post it directly to your stream
page. You also can schedule this post to go out at a specific date and time, or you
can save the post as a draft to post at a later time. You can also choose to share
this announcement with all students in the class or you can select specific
students by clicking the drop down arrow next to the all students section. Now the
classwork tab at the top is the main place where you can create assignments for
your students. In order to create a new assignment, just click on the create button
and then choose the type of assignment you want to create. The regular assignment
option is what I tend to use most often because it is the most open-ended. I have
the ability to create my own title, type in my own instructions, along with
attaching any documents from my computer, Google Drive, YouTube videos, or links
just like before. How this is different from adding an announcement on the stream
page is that I'm able to assign a point value to the assignment or have it be
ungraded. I can also assign a due date for students to complete the assignment by,
and I can create a topic for the assignment. As I described before, you can choose
to post the assignment immediately, schedule the assignment to go out at a specific
date and time, or you can save it as a draft and return to it later. I really like
to schedule all of my Google Classroom assignments at the beginning of the month
when I sit down to do my long-term planning so it is done and off of my plate. The
quiz assignment option will automatically attach a blank Google Forms that you can
use to create a quiz for your students. The question option allows you to pose a
question to your students and then have them respond to it. The material option is
a great way to share attachments or materials with your students that you want them
to have access to without prompting a specific assignment for them to complete. I
personally use the material option to share digital copies of the notes with my
students, along with different resources such as a multiplication chart that I want
them to have access to all year long. The reuse post option allows you to reuse a
post that you have already created in another class on Google Classroom. The topic
option is a great way to organize all of your assignments into categories. Under
the classwork tab, you can also view the Google Calendar for your class, which will
house all of the due dates for all of the assignments that you have created, along
with the Google Drive folder, which houses all of the attachments that you have
added to your class. As you add assignments and materials and questions to the
classwork tab, they will also appear on your stream tab in chronological order with
the most recent appearing at the top. I do want to quickly share a few ideas for
different types of assignments that you could have your students complete through
Google Classroom, just in case you're not exactly sure what I'm talking about.
First of all, you can link different articles or websites to have your students do
research and then have them answer questions either by using the question option on
Google Classroom or by linking a Google Doc where you already have outlined all of
the questions you want them to answer. You can also link quizzes or check for
understandings through Google Forms that you want your students to complete. And
the best part about Google Forms is you can make them self-grading. you can also
have students complete graphic organizers digitally through google docs or google
Sheets. The options are truly endless, so if you would like me to make a future and
tech made easy video on how to digitize assignments and have students complete them
through google Classroom, let me know down in the comments and i can definitely do
that. Moving on to the next tab, the people tab allows you to see all of the
teachers and students you have connected to your class. I already showed you how to
invite students to the class, but you can follow the same steps to add other
teachers to your class if you co-teach or if you want them to have access to your
materials. Once you have invited students to your class, you can also invite their
parents or guardians to the class so that they can receive updates and check on
their students' grades. You also have the ability to email students, mute students,
which revokes their ability to post and comment on things on Google Classroom, this
one comes in handy, trust me, or remove students from your class if they are no
longer in it. The Grades tab is essentially an online grade book for all of the
assignments for all of the students that you have on Google Classroom. This is
super handy to be able to see it all in one place. You also can go in and edit any
of the grades from this screen if you need to, instead of going directly to that
assignment. You can also click on any assignment and view student work that was
submitted or you can click on a student and see all of the work that they have
submitted for the different assignments. The last important feature I want to
highlight with Google Classroom is the class settings. You can access the settings
by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of your class page. You
can
edit any of the information for your class in the class details section in case it
changes. The general settings allows you to do a lot of different things. First of
all, you can choose to display, copy, reset, or disable your class code. You can
change the settings for your stream page and the abilities of teachers or students
to post and comment. You also can change the settings for the display of
notifications on the stream page, and you can choose to show deleted items or not.
In the grades calculation section, you have the ability to edit the grading system
to either go off of total points or have a weighted grading system with categories.
Now that is all I have for getting started with Google Classroom, but I can tell
you I have some tips and tricks up my sleeves for making Google Classroom more
efficient and organized. So if you want me to do another video revealing all my
secrets, please give this video a thumbs up. Don't forget to share this video out
with your teacher friends or your school or your district or whoever you think
needs to see it. Also go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notification
bell so you do not miss any future videos. As always, thank you for watching. I
love you all so much. Don't forget to put your positive pants on and I will catch
you in the next one. Thank you so much for watching all the way to the end of this
video and for supporting my YouTube channel. If you want to check out any of my
older videos, you can use the two links right down here. If you want to subscribe
to my channel so you don't miss any future videos, you can use the link right up
here. The links to all of my social media sites, my Teachers Pay Teacher store, my
merchandise store, my Amazon store are in the description box and I'll catch you
guys in the next one.