In this guide, we have shared some of the best Google Classroom tips and tricks for teachers. There are quite a lot of apps and services offered by the Silicon Valley giants. Spread across different platforms, some like Gmail and YouTube hardly needs an introduction or two. On the other hand, there are few apps that not many of you might not be aware of. Google Classroom belongs to the latter category. It has been a little over five years since it made its way, but it hasn’t been in the news that much up until now.
During this lockdown period, this app has seen quite an unprecedented rise. Well, the reason for the same is hardly anyone’s guess. Furthermore, the app is quite easy to understand, and many of you might already be aware of its usage. But what many of you might not be aware of is the fact that Google Classroom does comes with some pretty handy tips and tricks. Today, we will be listing 10 of the best tips to compliment your usage experience further. Let’s begin.
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Top 10 Google Classroom Tips and Tricks for Teachers
Google Classroom comes bundled with many Google apps, including Calendar, Drive, Gmail, Docs, and others. All these integrations make the Classroom even more interesting and friendly to use. Coupled with some of the other Google Classroom tips and tricks that we are about to mention, and you are in for a treat.
Applying Different Themes
If you are creating a new class, then you might also be creating sections of different subjects. While that is good, you could go a step further and apple themes on an individual basis to each of these subjects. This will help you in easily distinguishing one subject from another. The app comes with some preset themes however, if it doesn’t suit your needs, you could import your own as well. To apply a theme, click on the Select Theme option in the header image, select the theme from the list, and apply it to your classroom.
Likewise, you could also apply themes to the subject files that you create in Google Drive. By default, all your uploaded files get saved over to Google Drive. So if you wish to personalize them further and make them distinguishable from one other, do this. Head over to Class > Classwork > Class Drive Folder and open the desired folder. Right-click on the desired folder and select the Change color option. Select your favorite color from your list and that is it. With this, we conclude the Google Classroom themes related to themes. Let us now check out some of the other tips as well.
Schedule your work
This feature is a boon for teachers. If you prepared content and don’t wish to publish it right away, you could schedule it for a later date. All the homework, test papers, grades could be set to your desired date and time. For example, the test papers could be set to get automatically published on the day of exams. Similarly, the grade sheet could be published on the day of results day and so on. All this will be done automatically and save you a lot of time and effort.
Google Calendar Integration
The Classroom app comes integrated with some pretty useful Google apps. Google calendar is one such helpful integration. You could also create separate calendars for every class as well. For that, go to Class > Classwork > Google Calendar, There you could find all the schedules for different classes that you have created till now. You could modify and customize the calendar as well, as per your need.
Reference Material
Resource Material goes a great length in helping out the students with some extra study materials. You could add resources from different domains as well, including but not limited to Docs, Forms, YouTube, and any content from the World Wide Web. To do so, go to the Material section and click on the Add button. Select the desired reference material and click the Publish button.
Private Comments
Well, if you want to give feedback to any students or wish to share their results with them, it is recommended to do so privately rather than getting it displayed in the classroom for all to see. Whether it is constructive feedback, comments about a particular student, or his results, students will like it if they receive the same privately. And one of Google Classroom’s tips and tricks does this exceptionally well efficiently. It provides a handy platform to send personal comments to each student.
Sorting names
If you are dealing with a handful of students, it’s well and good. However, when there are hundreds of students in a class, it becomes an effort-taking activity to keep track of all the students. To make it easy to find the names of each of your students, you could sort it using the first name or the surname. The option to do so is situated at the top left, just above the name of the participants.
Inviting other teachers
S0me activities may require two or more than two teachers as well. For example, if you wish to review submissions, rather than sending it to your assistant via any other third-party means, you could simply add him or her to your classroom.
Doing so will give them access to all the uploaded files in that room. So to do so, head over to the People section and click on the Share icon. Type the name and email address of the concerned person and hit Invite. As and when they accept your invitation, you could start the co-working space.
Sending Group Emails
While you could easily send an individual email to each of your students, but it is obvious that one would refrain from doing so. If the same contents are to be sent to a group of students, then it only makes sense to send group emails. Google Classroom tips and tricks could very efficiently handle the same.
You could do the same right from the Classrooms section. Inside each classroom, you could select the students to whom the mail needs to be sent. Or you could also choose All students if the same needs to be done. Once the selection has been made, just hit the Email icon. The email will now be sent to all your selections.
Classroom Debate
One thing that many students complain about is that these online platforms didn’t allow them to carry on debate and discussions with their classmates. Well, many of you might not be aware of, but there are pretty handy Google Classroom tips and tricks through which you could achieve the same. To create a debate, head over to Class > Classroom > Create > Question. There you could add many different types of questions, including but not limited to MCQs, short answers, MCQs, among others.
Furthermore, you could also pin an important file at the top and then enable the discussion for any of the desired file/files. To do so, select any question or file, and then from the right-hand side menu, tick mark the Students can reply to each other option. This will create a discussion forum where students can talk on a given topic within itself.
Rounding off this Google Classroom tips and tricks article is a pretty handy Chrome extension. Provided by Google, the Share to Classroom extension allows you to share interesting and useful articles, links, posts, and files to students with ease. From the extension menu, which is right to the Omnibox (address bar), select the Classroom extension, and then share the desired content.
Conclusion
With this, we conclude the guide on useful Google Classroom tips and tricks for teachers. All in all, we have shared 10 different tips for you to try out. Do let us know in the comments which one of them you find most useful. Talking about usefulness, here are some iPhone Tips and Tricks, PC tips and tricks, and Android Tips and Trick that you should check out as well.