In this video, I'll be showing parents and guardians everything they need to
know in order to support students with using Google Classroom. Google Classroom
is a digital classroom platform where teachers can post assignments, resources,
and links to external programs that they want students to visit. In this video,
I'll cover a basic overview of Google Classroom. I'll show you how students can
sign up for classes, as well as how they can view assignments and turn their
assignments in. Then I'll show you how students can see their grades and
comments from teachers in Google Classroom and I'll also showcase some of
the other features of Google Classroom, like the embedded calendar function, that
can help you with time management. We'll take a look at how to change some of the
settings to best suit your family's needs and lastly I'll show you how
guardian notifications work so that you can choose to get email notifications
about your students progress on work in Google Classroom. My name is Sam Kary
and this is my YouTube channel for The New EdTech Classroom.
The most common way that teachers use Google Classroom is to post
announcements, assignments, and materials for students. Obviously an individual
teacher's Google Classroom is going to look a little bit different depending on
how they set it up, but in general, the major features of the program are the
same and there's a few important things that you'll need to know in order to
best support your student. First let's look at the Google Classroom homepage.
Here you can see the classes that your student is currently enrolled in. On the
top right hand corner of the screen, there's a plus button that students can
click to enter a class code to join a class. A teacher may also choose to just
email a student directly with an invitation link that will get them
directly into their Google Classroom. If you click on the drop-down menu on the
left-hand side of the screen, you'll see that there are a couple of useful
features for students. The first is the 'To-do' list. If you click on the 'To-do'
list, students can see all the work they have
for all their classes together in one place. You'll see there is a 'Missing' tab
with all the work that still needs to be turned in, as well as a 'Done' tab that
shows all the work that's been completed. Next, if you click on the
'Settings' icon, you'll see that there's an option to turn on email notifications.
You'll see if email notifications is turned on that your student has an
option for the types of email notifications that they would receive.
The calendar overview is also a really important function. When students click
on the calendar, they'll be able to see the due dates for all the assignments
that have been assigned through all the Google Classrooms that they're enrolled
in. You can see here that the different colors indicate an assignment for a
different class. To get into a specific class, students will click on that class,
and then when you're inside, you'll notice that there are three main tabs on
Google Classroom - Stream, Classwork, and People. Teachers typically use the Stream
for announcements, though depending on how a teacher has it set up, it's
possible that the Stream will look kind of like a running blog post with
announcements, assignments, and comments. I personally just use the Stream for
announcements and then if students have questions about a daily announcement,
they can post that question in the comments below.
You'll notice on the left hand side of the Stream that there's also a box that
shows students what upcoming assignment is due. Then students can click 'View All'
to get a bigger picture overview of all the assignments for that class. Here
you'll notice that some assignments for my demo student have been turned in,
whereas others are missing. Students can click on these assignments as well, in
order to see the assignment and instructions. If students click 'Return
With Grade,' they can see which assignments have been graded, the grade
that was given to them for that assignment. The dialog box on the
assignment indicates that the teacher left a comment for that student and the
way the student would view it is simply by clicking on that assignment. If you're
interested in just seeing which assignments are missing, you can click on
the 'Missing' tab at the bottom and that will show you all the assignments that
still need to be turned in. The Classwork tab is probably the most important tab
on Google Classroom because this is going to be the place where teachers are
going to post assignments. You'll see on this Google Classroom that I've set it
up with different topics based on weeks that we are doing remote teaching.
You may also see that teachers set up their topics with different categories
like classwork, homework, and projects, or it's possible that a teacher did not set
up topics at all and you'll just see a long-running stream of assignments. The
most important thing to know is that the assignment at the top is the most
recently posted assignment. In order to access the assignment, students just
click on the assignment, and then click 'View Assignment.' There they can see the title
of the assignment, the due date, as well as any files that the teacher has
attached to the assignment for students to either use as supplemental material
or to complete to turn in. You'll notice that there's a place for a
student to add a public comment, where they could ask a question to their
classmates or to the teacher, as well as a place for a student to ask the teacher
a private comment that would only be seen by their teacher. And then when
they're ready to view the work that's been attached, students just need to
click on the file to open it. Depending on the type of assignment that's been
created, students will have a few different options for how they can turn
in assignments. If a teacher made a copy of a Google Doc and pushed it out to
students through Google Classroom, they can just click 'Turn In' at the top of
their document and that will walk them through the process of turning their
assignment in through Google Classroom. Since this assignment is through Google
Slides, students don't have the 'Turn In' button at the top of their document.
Instead, they'll just return to their assignment, click the 'Turn In' button and
then verify that they want to submit their work. It is important to know that
once work is submitted, students will not be able to edit it
until their teacher has returned it to them. You'll also see that below the
attachment is a place where students can add or create. Sometimes teachers have
students create work in other programs and then students are going to need to
upload files into Google Classroom. The way they would do that would be to first
download the file from a program they're using. Then, students would click 'Add or
Create,' locate the file that they downloaded on their computer, upload it
into Google Classroom, and hit 'Turn In.' Another type of assignment
that a teacher might create would be a question. If a teacher asks a student a
question, they'll type their response and then click 'Turn In.' And then depending on
how the teacher has the settings set up, students can view and respond to each
other's answers to the question. Similar to the calendar we looked at on the
Google Classroom homepage, there's also a calendar view option for each individual
class. Choosing this calendar option will allow students to see a month overview
of when all their assignments are due for a particular class. Another useful
feature of Google Classroom for parents is the guardian summaries feature. In
order to receive guardian summaries, the teacher will need to add your email to
their Google Classroom. Then you'll receive an email inviting you to
participate in guardian summaries. After you click accept, you'll be given a
choice whether or not you want to receive weekly email notifications, daily
email notifications, or whether you want to opt-out of notifications all together.
Daily summaries are sent in the afternoons and weekly summaries are sent
every Friday afternoon. The guardian summary email will include any missing
work from the previous week and it will also include all the class activity for
each of the Google Classrooms that your student is enrolled in, so you'll see all
the announcements and assignments that were posted for your student. If your
student's teacher is posting daily announcements and daily assignments, you
might want to consider signing up for daily notifications. Although there are
other features of Google Classroom, I think those are the most important for
parents to know in order to support your students with using this digital
classroom platform. If you have any questions about Google Classroom, please
feel free to ask in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching my video
to the end. If you found the tips that I shared helpful, please share it with
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updates. You can also check out some of the other tutorials I have on my channel
by clicking on one of those two videos above and if you're interested in
downloading any of the resources that I've created and show on my videos,
please visit my website at www.newedtechclassroom.com.
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are all in the description below. Thanks so much and have a great week!