 Welcome, once again, to Wednesday webinars at ESU8. Today, I have with me Lisa Pospichel from Norfolk. Hello, everybody. And my name's Corey Dahl, and I'm the instructional technology facilitator here at ESU8. And today, we are talking about Google Classroom. So this is meant to be a beginning session to what is Google Classroom? How does it work? It'll be a high flyover in about the next 30 minutes. So let's start today by getting you involved. And I'm going to pull in a poll, OK? And the question is, I've already used Google Classroom, yes or no. So if you could click in there and submit. Then in a moment here, I will show you the results. So this also helps us with a little bit of an idea of who we have in our audience. It's great seeing all the Norfolk people in here. And here are results. So most of our audience here has not used it. So I think that's good, because that's basically how we were doing this presentation. All right, let's start by saying, what is Google Classroom? Let's just take a look at some of the things that it is and talk about a couple of things that it maybe is not. Lisa? I think Google Classroom is a real simple way to organize handouts and get things from your students. So hand in, hand out, kind of a simple learning management system, right? Way to communicate with them, announce things. Right, it provides an organizational structure if you're a Google Apps for Ed school, really. And I really like the saying that it takes a lot of the techie out of it. It really makes it nice and simple. Last year, even less than actually just this month, it has come out in August. So prior to last month, people could make something like this work, but it didn't have the look and feel, and it was a little bit techie. So this will make it very easy for someone who isn't very techie to have a very organized system for communicating and getting assignments turned in and turned down. And we'll talk about a lot of those things throughout the webinar. I also think it's smart to get started now, because I think they're going to keep improving this and add new things as the year goes. So get started now. OK, so to get started, your school has to be involved in the Google Apps for Education domain. And you have to have a school that's signed up for that. And you pretty much know if your school is in that or not. And if you're not sure, ask someone. And if they say no, this might be a great time for your technology people in your district to help you sign up. Yeah. And you might even call it GAF. I think it's not the acronym here. So if they say we're a GAF school, you're pretty much in there. But you cannot do it with a regular Google account, right? And GAF is that G for Google and the A for Apps for Education. For Education, yeah. Often it's referred to as a GAF. A GAF. Right. And so if you do get signed up, the website is right there. It's classroom.google.com. But you do have to be part of that Education Apps domain for this to work. So General Joe Public cannot do it. Also worth noting, since I'm talking about that, is I can't if I'm not a part of Norfolk Public Schools domain, I cannot be a student or a teacher in their world. So it is protected. Yes. That's a good point, good point. And they'll tell you, if you go to classroom.google.com right now, if you're signed into your school account, it will say whether or not you're Google Apps for Education School. Right. OK. So once you are in your Google Apps for Ed School, you've signed up and all the things that are turned on that need to be, right when you go to classroom.google.com, you're going to see this. Lisa, and what's important to pick here? Yeah, and you only see it once. But if you're a teacher, make sure you click on Teacher. Make sure students tap on or click on Student. Very important. Right. So what happens if, because you can imagine, right? You're from Norfolk. If you have 1,000 some kids in the junior high, how many do you have in the junior high? 600. Right. So 600 students. Someone may pick a teacher when they're in fact a student. What can they do? Well, you'd have to go to your Google Apps for Education Administrator, and they will reset you. Right. Just let them know that you clicked on the wrong thing in classrooms. Right. So that's just something that someone, again, probably the person or the group of people who signed you up for the Google Apps for Ed, have access to fixing that. Yes, yes they do. OK. So just a general tip, when you get students in there and yourself to, you may not want to necessarily explore and say that you're a student, because then you'll have to switch. No, even if you're a teacher and you're going in with a classroom, you can do both. But make sure you tell them you're a teacher. Right, right. Because you can do both. So let's start this by touring what the teacher side of it is. So we're going to start by just touring the screen. We'll show you how to create a class, and we'll just move from there. That picture was, man? OK. If we're getting started here, and we're signed into Google Apps for Ed, it is as simple, and we're not even watering this down, is clicking that plus. That plus. And they really have simplified what you see. So anything that's on the screen, pay attention to it, because that plus sign is where you can create a class as a teacher or join it. Now, if I was only a student, I would only see join. Right, right. So it depends on what your role is, as far as what it is that you're going to see. Right, and you only see this plus on the home screen for Google Classrooms. So if you're in one of your classes, you have to go back home to see that plus. Right, absolutely. OK, next. So it's quite simple to get started. They don't overwhelm you with a lot of techy stuff. Talk about class names and sections, Lisa. And also, the one question I've heard is if I'm a science teacher and I teach eight, or not eight, let's say four sections, should I lump all of my students into one class or separate out in sections? You know what I'm saying? Do we talk about that? Yeah, and we discuss this too. But I would put them each as their own session, and this is why. If I want to see a class period, say section two of the same class I have four of, I want to just pull up those students. If I group them all in one, they're going to be alphabetized as far as assignments being turned in, and I won't be able to separate them or show them to the class. And there is a very easy tip that we're going to be giving you on how you can duplicate your assignments and your announcements so that you can get them in all your sections quickly. So because you have some teachers in Norfolk already starting on this, they figured out that they didn't want 125 students in one class. Even though it's the same class, they still want it separate. So call it, like you said, or whatever, section one, section two, or period one. It's whatever makes sense to you. So before you make that mistake, just one for each period. One for each period. And then once you've typed it in, it's as simple as create. So we've clicked plus, and we're going to create a class. We've typed in a name, and now off we go. So this is what it comes up. So here's my example. I just typed in biology. Notice I put P1 in there for period one. So we're going to start by just touring this screen here. And when you sign up for yours, you'll get this option there. You'll see this little start tour. See where that big red arrow is? I would suggest just clicking on that because it gives you a very short tour. And let's demonstrate what that looks like. You get a little window like this, and it talks about the classroom stream. So right in the middle of your page, you have an actual little stream where your assignments and where your announcements come through. For that class. And the word stream is familiar to those people who are Twitter users, because everything just flows through the stream. Chronologically, and how you added it. So we'll come back to some of this. The next part is the classroom code. And that's down at the bottom here. Now one thing to point out, I'm going to have Lisa talk about this, is the fact that sometimes, and if you've ever done this, it's hard to tell if you look at my code there. It says four or five Z. Now is that a lowercase zero, or lowercase O? Is it a capital O? Is it a zero? So they give you an option to do what, Lisa? To reset it. And I've done so far as resetting it 15 times until I get one that doesn't have confusing numbers or letters, and one that's easy to type in. Especially on the iPads, I try to get it so that all the numbers are on one side and letters so the kids aren't switching back between the keyboards. So Lisa, when you say you tried it 15 times, you just kept hitting the reset button. Reset, reset until I saw one I liked. Now I use the examples of the zero and the O. What was your example that you don't like? One and the L always get confused with students. And you want to do this right away at the beginning. So one of the first things you look at when you create a class is change that code. Because guess what? You get to share this with students. And if you change it, then you'll have to start all over. Because look at mine, I have what appears to be a zero. And is that a one? Is that an L? What is that there? And I put that green arrow over that. So that's a great tip. So just continue to reset it. If you're having problems with the sound that I'm seeing in the chat, we are recording this so hopefully maybe try to plug into ethernet. All right, so we'll move on. The next part is the student. So we have the stream on the left-hand side there. The student's in the middle. And this is still part of the tour. Okay, and then within the students, you can do several things. And the hint or the tip that they give you here is this, that you can add students here and there are all sorts of other things you can do. But we won't spend a lot of time on this right now. And later in the webinar, we're gonna show you what the student side looks like. And I really think it's best just to give the kids the code. It's just much easier. It keeps you from making mistakes than entering their wrong email address. Okay, the about section. Now, I love some of the tips Lisa has for this regarding the about section and what you might want to use it for and where you might want to put these things. So Lisa, you wanna talk a little bit about the about section. Yeah, you bet. The about, you know, this is where you can add a little bit more description, but what I really like and then what I don't like about the stream is that things get buried below. But you'll see at the bottom of the about, there's a place that you can add materials. This is where I would put all the things that I want the kids to have access during the entire semester or length of the class. And there's lots of different things that you can add in those materials, which are, you'll see some links here in a second. You can add attachment. So you can upload a file from your computer. Could be a PDF, which I probably recommend if you're distributing things that way. So one example of something that you might attach, let's say you have something like a PDF and that is your class from syllabus. Sure, a rubric maybe that you use with your students. Now, why again would you put it here in the about section and not in the stream? So it doesn't get buried at the bottom. Because the stream as you use this class throughout, then the student wants to find the syllabus and they can if you say all that stuff, all of our meeting dates, all the important information is under the about. That's right, that's right. So the first one is an attachment, straightforward. Yep, next one is just a Google doc. So if you've uploaded it to Google Drive, that's a great place to attach it also. And then the next one is a video. So what if you have a video introducing your classroom and maybe some of the rules that you have if you've gone that far and created it, I'd put it in the about. And the last one, this was a really good tip from one of the teachers. They put their classroom webpage link here. So any link, you can even use this for any number of things, but it's just a link to any outside web page. All right, the next section. Up in the upper left hand side of your classroom, you have the ability to change and make some changes to your settings. And let's talk about one big one there. And the big one is what, under settings? So I clicked on the top left hand with those three lines and then I'm clicking on settings and then what have I drawn an arrow to there? I'm gonna send email notifications and the default is that it is checked. It is checked when you start. So what might happen to you, Lisa, if you're a teacher with 150 kids, every time someone has an assignment, you would get what? An email and it would totally bombard my email inbox. So I would uncheck that, send email notifications. Right, so if, unless you enjoy many, many emails, I would shut that off. Now, as a teacher, we're saying maybe shut that off. What's your recommendation, Lisa, for a student? I would probably leave that on because anytime you post an assignment or announcement, it will send them an email notification. So I would tell your students to leave that on. Right, that's a good tip. Okay, next, this is a purple theme. Looks like there's some sort of bubbles there. You can change this as minor, but you know, you might have some sort of coordination with your classes and so on. So you do have the ability to do that. And then you just scroll through a gallery. And no, I expect just like many of things that Google does that you'll have the ability at some point to put your own picture in there. This is the first, it's only about a month, so. And it's one of those aesthetic things that, you know, that'll be one of the last. Right, right, right. Okay, so next, let's look at the stream a little closer. Now, within the stream, we have announcements and assignments. Now, we're gonna talk about these one at a time and they seem pretty straightforward, but you might want to use announcements in a certain way and assignments in another way. So let's start by looking at announcements, okay? Yeah, announcements, I would use for those things that you don't want to put a due date to. Right. So that you don't have kids that have these late flags on there. So if you want to just pass something out to them, you want to let them know there's a test coming up, those are the types of things that make an announcement. So things without due dates. Yes. And you'll notice just like in your about section, when I make an announcement, I can attach something to an announcement, it could be a flyer, perhaps on something that's coming out. Again, it can be anything within my Google Drive, it could be a video, just an announcement, okay? Now, off here to the side, this is what's nice. Go ahead and talk about this, Lisa. Now, this way I don't have to make the announcement for every section. Remember, we talked about making a classroom for every section. Make sure this is great because you can check on all the sections that it applies to. So you don't have to recreate it. Right, so by a biology period one, if I have biology period two, period three, and I know that assignment is going to go to everyone, I could just one time and send it to all those classes. You don't have to repeat those steps over and over again. Right, right. So that's key to know. And that's also, earlier we talked about making sections for everything. So this is an easy way to distribute something. Okay, next, now let's move to an assignment and let's see how that's different from the announcements. And the biggest piece was what, Lisa? The putting a due date, and that's probably the thing I forget the most, is adding that due date. And it's default is for the day that you're, the next day that you're making this assignment. And so just make sure that you change that. And also, we drew an arrow to this time. You can actually put a time that it's due if you have a specific time. Okay. And then there, just like announcements, you have the ability with an assignment to give that assignment to each section that you wish. Right, there's one thing that I think I'm gonna add to this section. When it comes to giving an assignment, and if you're attaching a document, especially in Google Drive, you'll have the option of whether or not to make it view, editable, or make a copy for each student. And that to me is really important, and depending on what platform your students are using, you'll wanna play around with that. Right, so test the waters a little bit before you get too deep. Let's start, I'm gonna throw in here another poll. Let's see if you remember. Okay, so I'll bring in a poll. We'll get you involved again. Okay, I'll open my poll. Okay, I have to be part of a Google Apps for Education domain to utilize the classroom. Your choices are what's Google, true or false? And the results, yes, you do have to be part of a Google domain, a Google Apps for Ed domain, or a GAF school to take part in that. Right, I see a great question from Heidi down here. It says, do these due dates connect to their calendar or send a message as it nears? I will tell you though when they go, I don't know that for sure, but I do know that when they go into classroom, it does give them, and when we look at the student view, it will give them a list of assignments that in chronological order that are coming up due. So they do get some sort of notification. I just don't know if it goes on their calendar. That's a great question. Well, to figure that out, I'll look at that. This being as new as it is, there were two weeks into school. Right, great question. All right, Lisa. See where it says essay and it says one done. And I don't see below that, but it will tell you how many students are left to complete it. So you can very quickly as a teacher, take a look at what assignments, what students still need to complete. And when you click on the essay assignment, it's going to take you to another page that is going to tell you the status and who's done and who has not done. You can also look at the assignments that have come in and you click on it, it will open up that assignment if it's a Google Doc or an attachment. You can also return the assignment. So after you graded it, you can return it or let's say that the student didn't do what he was asked. You can return that assignment and have them corrected. I think that's great. Absolutely. Yeah, you can also email, do some other things in there. So take a look at that one. Now there was a tip that I wanted to have Lisa talk about and the tip regards this. We had some questions right away. You know, as well as I were all teachers at some point where we got on a roll we're really into our Google class and we want to make all these assignments. Now if we start posting in our stream all of the assignments, then the kids see them and they're starting to do them and we've already had these questions. So how Lisa, since we can't time them yet as far as when they go out or delay it, what's a good idea if you're that teacher who gets on a roll and they really want to get organized and get everything ready, how can we organize this Google classroom right now so that when it is time to send those things out I don't have to sit down and actually do it and think about where those assignments are. Right, and you know, I credit the junior high teachers during this training week kind of brainstormed in and the idea or the tip is to make a master class. So make a section that has no students in it whatsoever that build all your announcements and your assignments as far ahead as you want and as soon as you are ready you can go ahead and check on those classes that you want to put them in, yeah. And so I thought that was a great idea. So if I'm the science teacher and I have all my sections of biology like I was saying earlier I actually am going to make a class called master class or whatever makes sense and I put all everything in there. And then just like you're on the screen. Just go back and I just send them out. So then when I get on a roll as we all do then we get you want to get ahead of the game. Yeah, and I think in the future Google will make a delay of assignment that I really like the master class idea. Right. So make a master class. Make a master class. Now the student view. Here we go. Here we go. We're ahead of ourselves, yeah. Okay, so when students get here and they sign in they are going to see all the classes that they've enrolled in. And to get to the class they have to click on the name of the class in the colored area. And that folder, I couldn't have them click on that very often. What that does is take them out to Google Drive to the folder where everything is but you can really do almost everything within this home page. And this is called the home page. Right, okay. The next page that students see. And on the, oh, it's not the next page. This is how they enroll, okay. So just like you had the plus to create a class, okay. Students have a plus to enroll themselves. So they're going to click on that plus and it will say put in enrollment code. And then the code that you generated is what you will share with them. And they'll just put it right there. And this is what we referred to earlier, how we continue to reset it so it wasn't confusing. Because if they don't type it in literally, perfect, it will not join. They can't join it, okay. And then here is what the students see. Just almost exactly what you see, except for instead of students, they see the word classmates. So they'll see stream classmates and about, which your bout should have all of those different pieces that you uploaded like your materials and links for the class page, any of those things. And then down below, they'll see, let's look at the stream. So if I have an assignment, you'll see here, it's late, but I have an attached Google direct list. I have a YouTube video, which I think is really kind of cool. Okay, anything else to add there? Yeah, let's go on, okay. Now I want to point out these three lines and you're going to see this on your teacher site too. This is how you get back to the home page because that's the only place you're going to find that plus. But I do want to point out, somebody put the question about dates being due. On the student view, they see assignments and what it will do is take them to an assignments page. Go ahead and click the next one and we'll see what that looks like. So for students in each one of their classes, it will have what's coming up in chronological order. So I really like that it takes all of their classes together and put all the assignments on one page. Kind of cool. And it has to do and then what things are done up there at the top they can click on. Right, so up here, you have a to do list created for them. Yeah, yeah, which is what the default is on and then what's done. That's kind of cool. And let's take a look though at how a student turned something in. Because we talked about this is a way for teachers to distribute stuff. Now let's look at how students can turn things in. So when the students are ready to turn it in, they're gonna click on that assignment and they're gonna come to this page and they're gonna have the option to add things from Google Drive, a link or upload a file. They can also create, you'll see down here, a new document, presentation, spreadsheet or a drawing. And then once they've uploaded it, they can turn it in. Okay, and if it's something that you created for them to finish a copy, they can just click on turn in and it all lines up pretty well, I like it, it's cool. Once it's turned in, you'll get it and it will say done. So how do you the teacher know, then again, referring back to earlier, that someone's turned it in? And it's instantaneous, so it's great if you're looking at your screen, your stream as students are turning in, it will go to two or done, four or left and it will keep changing as students turn things in. Right, so it keeps it running tally for you in your stream as the teacher. Right. Okay, now this last page here, we wanna talk about what we're looking at here, this is back to the teacher view and it's talking about what it does for you in your Google Drive, wanna talk about this? Yeah, and what happens here is that Google Classrooms is directly connected to your Google Drive and some of you will see as soon as you create a classroom, there's a new folder in your Google Drive and that folder is going to always be called Classroom. So don't be shocked that that's there, it is automatically creating it, don't move it, don't delete things, because it is being automatically populated, that's the one thing that you'll wanna not try to over organize yourself with that folder. And then you'll want to also note that every class you have, there'll be a folder and you can double check the information in there, you can go in and check students' assignments in there, just don't move it or delete it. Okay, one last poll here, one last poll. Should I delete my Classroom folder in my Google Drive? Yes, that's not a problem, no, leave it alone or what's a Google Drive? You'd have a car. And the results, yes. Leave it alone. I heard you, leave it alone. Leave it alone. Okay, that's the end. Once again, I'm Corey Dahl and this is Lisa Pospichel and hopefully you have a taste of what this Google Apps for Ed Google Classroom gets you. If you need more help, please contact us, ask around. It has just come out just this August, so it is very new and it will continue to get better, I have no doubt. And the cost, did we talk about the cost? Oh, no, we didn't, it is free. It is free. Do we have a minute per question? I see one coming through here. Yes, yes. Okay, we have one minute. Flubaru, can it grade it and go right into classrooms? The answer to that is no. Although you can add grades in there, if your school has a grading software like we do, Infinite Campus, just grade it in there. Don't worry about doing double duty and grading that. You'll want to not worry about it. But Flubaru, it's not connected yet. Maybe in the future, you never know. Next Wednesday, our webinar will be Google Favorites. We attended a Google Summit this summer, myself and Jill Bates, and we also have another guest. We have Mickey from Norfolk joining us to talk about some of the great things that we heard. So we'll give you, I'll have a couple of days, some high flyovers again of the big tips that we took away from the Google Summit. Gee, that went fast. Yes, it did. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us, guys.