in this video i'll be giving you my best
pro tips to help you make the most out
of google classroom this year
hey everybody it's sam carrey with new
tech classroom and on this channel we
show you how to teach with technology to
create engaging relevant learning
experiences for students a
well-optimized learning management
system is a critical component of any
classroom that uses technology google
classroom is a relatively flexible
learning management system that gives
teachers lots of choice for how they
would set it up and that comes with pros
and cons so in this video i'll be
sharing my best tips for organizing
materials in google classroom and also
how to do things like optimize the
settings and how to teach students how
to use your learning management system
so that it doesn't become a barrier to
learning so my first tip is that you
should make sure you're posting
absolutely everything to google
classroom by everything i mean all the
assignments you would pass out to
students all the tutorials all the
handouts all the announcements
everything should go on google classroom
so why is this important one reason is
that it communicates to students and
families that your google classroom is a
reliable place to go for all the
information that's needed another is
that if you reliably post everything to
google classroom it virtually eliminates
the issue of abstinence students not
knowing where to go to find work the
issue of students losing work and not
knowing how to get an extra copy and it
also just helps make your class more
accessible in general because all of the
resources can be found in a single
well-organized location plus an added
benefit for you is that you can reuse
posts year after year which is
ultimately going to save you a lot of
time in the long run my second tip is to
hide notifications for assignments on
the stream if you don't do this the
default setting is going to push
everything that you post onto the stream
so you'll see here that by default the
stream would show your announcement as
well as assignments you post it it's not
hard to envision how incredibly
cluttered the stream could get after
posting just a few assignments and
announcements so to clean this up what
you want to do is go up to the settings
cog and then scroll down to classwork on
the stream and there you'll want to
select no notifications so now when we
go back to the stream you'll see that
the only visible post is an announcement
that's going to help clarify for
students that announcements are found on
the stream and assignments are found on
the classwork tab tip number three is to
change the settings so that students
could leave a comment on one of these
announcements but couldn't create their
own post on the stream the reasoning for
this is that it still allows students to
share their voice and add comments but
they have to be about a post that you've
already created if you don't change this
setting then you risk having your stream
be cluttered with all kinds of student
posts plus your posts and at worst has
some inappropriate things posted on the
stream that are there for a while before
you're able to catch them and take them
down so to change this we're gonna go
back to the settings scroll down to
stream and then change the settings so
that students can only comment tip
number four is to organize your topics
based on date ranges as opposed to
categories topics are a necessary tool
for keeping everything organized and you
should definitely use them again it's
both a pro and a con but one issue that
can easily come up when you're creating
topics is that you create topics based
on ideas that you have in your own head
as opposed to a logical way of
organizing assignments that would be
easily predictable for students so one
common way people end up organizing
their google classroom is by creating
different categories like homework
projects group work things like that and
then you'll also see some google
classrooms where topics are created
based on subject areas like math science
reading etc and the problem with both of
those types of organization systems is
that it requires students to essentially
read your mind they have to figure out
on their own where are my new
assignments a new assignment might be in
math it might be down in reading and it
requires students to have to click all
around in your google classroom to find
what they need i'm a fan of limiting
students needing to click around so i
think the best way to set up google
classroom is instead by using weeks and
date ranges so here for example i would
set up one topic to be week one and then
i would write the date ranges for week
one and then i would set up a second
topic to be week two and then include
the date ranges for week two and since i
already have assignments in here all i
need to do is drag and drop them to the
topic categories where they need to go
now notice that i used week one plus a
date range here that was intentional and
it leads to my fifth tip which is to use
your own internal labeling system based
on generic numbers rather than date
ranges now that might sound a little bit
confusing but just bear with me here for
a second so the idea here is that i'm
thinking ahead because i want to be able
to reuse my posts year after year and if
all i did was label my assignments based
on actual dates then those assignments
are going to be very hard to find
because the dates are going to shift
around so what i want to do is create my
own internal labeling system that's
predictable and that will more or less
stay the same year after year so i
already have week one and week two here
so what i'm going to do is i'm now going
to go in and edit my assignments and i'm
going to re-label them so in front of
every assignment under the category week
one i'm first going to put the number
one then i'm also going to add a period
and then i'll put a number that
represents the day of the week so one
corresponds to monday two to tuesday
three to wednesday and so on so if i
create an assignment here that says 1.2
that means it's an assignment that i
gave out week one on tuesday and i'll go
ahead and just put those labels in front
of all my assignments here as well now
of course you don't have to use this
exact labeling system but once you have
it you can put those numbers on every
single assignment not just on the actual
label in google classroom and that's
going to help you cross check and find
documents that you're looking for in
google drive or wherever else you have
them and although it's an internal
labeling system it can also be useful to
teach the students because then they can
correlate an assignment in google
classroom and let's say something is
missing in the gradebook they can go
back and easily find it based on the
label in google classroom tip number six
is to create assignment bundles rather
than posting lots of different
individual posts with assignments and
materials so let's say for example that
i wanted to have students watch an ed
puzzle video to learn about ancient
greece and then i wanted to have them
fill out a graphic organizer to show
what they learned other than creating
two separate assignments i'm just going
to create a single assignment and then
i'll post the ed puzzle video in this
assignment as well as the graphic
organizer that they're going to use to
show what they've learned from the video
this is a continuation of the idea of
limiting the places where students need
to click around to find things my
seventh tip is to leave any evergreen
resources that you have unassigned to a
topic so let's say for example that i
have a document here that i want
students to be able to access over the
course of the whole year that just has a
bunch of different tutorials that they
can watch so the first thing i'll do is
go up here to create and then rather
than choose assignment i'm going to
choose material then i'll attach that
resource document to this material and
now rather than choosing a topic i'll
just leave it unassigned when we go back
to the classwork tab you can now see
that that resource document sticks to
the top of google classroom so even when
we create new topics and post new
assignments that resource document is
always going to be at the very top and
since we posted this as view-only
material every single time you make
updates to the document those updates
will show up and that way you can
continue to post new resources that
students would need throughout the
entire school year tip number eight is
to share the direct link to assignments
if you're going to create a hyperlink or
if you're going to embed that assignment
somewhere else if you don't share the
direct link and all you do is go up and
copy and paste the link to google
classroom it's just going to take
students to the classwork page as
opposed to taking them to the specific
assignment instead what you want to do
is hover over an individual assignment
click on the three dots and then select
copy link now when you share that link
with students it will take students
directly to that specific assignment and
if you've set it to make a copy for
students it's going to take them to
their individual assignment with their
individual copy tip number 10 is to use
the comment bank in google classroom to
save you time when you're grading so the
way that this works is that you'll click
on an assignment that a student has
turned in and then you're going to see
that it's going to pull up a grading
dashboard there you can leave a comment
on a student's work by right-clicking
clicking comment and then writing your
comment once you add the comment click
on the three dots next to the comment
and then select add to comment bank now
once it's added you can go back
highlight another part of this document
select comment again and this time you
want to type hashtag and then you'll see
that the comment you just put in the
bank is going to show up so that's one
way to create comments on the spot but
you can also just pre-write your own
comments and add them to the comment
bank here so i'm sure you have lots of
comments that you would repetitively
leave on student work throughout the
entire year just pre-write those here in
the comment bank and then when you go to
add a comment on a student's work and
type hashtag you'll see all of the
comments that you already added to your
comment bank show up now tip number 10
is to install the moat extension so that
you can add audio notes directly in
google classroom and this actually
relates to the previous tip because you
can also save your audio notes and i'll
show you how to do that too what you're
going to do is go to the google chrome
web store download moat for free and
then once you have it downloaded and
installed you'll notice this little
purple m show up in any place in google
classroom where you would normally be
able to type a comment so here in the
grading dashboard you could just click
that purple m record a comment that you
want to leave for a student about their
work and when a student logs in they'll
be able to listen to your comment now
when you click on that comment and then
select save as that's going to allow you
to save this audio comment in
essentially the same exact way that you
would with your text-based comment in
google classroom so you could pre-record
comments or just make them as you go and
then reuse them over and over again just
another quick way to automate your
systems and save you a little bit of
time tip number 11 is that you should
have somebody else log into your google
classroom to see whether or not it makes
sense oftentimes when we're setting up
our learning management systems we're
doing so from our own perspective so
it's really important that you get the
perspective of somebody else and that
they communicate back to you whether or
not your organization system is clear or
not to really make google classroom as
student friendly as possible i'd
recommend that you try to get your
entire school together to log into each
other's google classrooms to make sure
that your organizational practices are
aligned and that the student experience
is relatively similar when they go into
different classes and they experience
different teachers google classrooms you
can imagine if a student has five
different classes and has to log into
five different google classrooms that
all look quite different how confusing
that could be and this is also an
activity you can do at any point in the
year you can still optimize your google
classroom mid-year it doesn't just have
to be in the beginning a 12th tip is to
use a scavenger hunt as a way to
introduce students to your google
classroom and yes this still applies
even if students claim to already know
how to use google classroom because
there are lots of features they probably
don't know about and your google
classroom is always going to be slightly
different than a previous teachers
having students do a scavenge hunt is
going to be more engaging and it's
actually going to make the learning much
more sticky because they're experiencing
things and doing things on their own as
opposed to just listening or observing
as you explain to them how it works so
in this sample scavenge activity
students would do things like go find an
announcement in google classroom post
their response then take a screenshot to
prove that they had done so they could
also do things like figure out how to
leave a private comment versus a public
comment and how to use the calendar
function so that they can get a big
picture overview of all their
assignments if you're interested in this
scavenger hunt as well as a
student-facing tutorial explaining to
them how to do it those are actually
part of our how to get your technology
integrated classroom up and running
online course that's also part of our
academy there's a link to find out more
information about that course as well as
our academy in the video description
below my 13th tip is to make a video
tutorial explaining to students and
families how your learning management
system works so you want to start with
the experiential discovery based
activity in the scavenger hunt but then
you want to follow that up with a
tutorial that students and families can
re-watch as many times as they need to
to learn the key features of your lms
the benefit of making your own tutorial
is that you probably have your own
little idiosyncratic ways that you set
up and use google classroom and you can
explain all of those but if you'd prefer
you can also use a pre-created tutorial
we do have one on our copa compliant
student channel so i put the link for
that in the video description below if
you want to just take it and play it for
your class regardless of whether or not
it's a pre-created one or one you make
it's important that you're showing them
lots of the different features in google
classroom that they probably don't know
about so for example on the main
dashboard you want to show them how they
can find their assignments for all of
their classes and how they can see what
work is upcoming what work is missing
and what work they've already completed
you'll also want to show them how to do
things like upload external documents to
google classroom as part of an
assignment how to make sure that they
click that turn in button as well as how
to leave a private comment or ask a
public comment for the whole class my
14th tip is to change the email
notification settings on your main
google classroom dashboard to do this
you'll want to go up to the three lined
menu and then scroll down to the
settings cog and there you'll see that
the default is that you're going to get
emails for virtually every single thing
that happens in google classroom this is
going to result in getting a huge bomb
of emails so at minimum i would at least
turn off comments on your posts if you
don't turn this off and you post an
announcement every single time a student
responds you'll get a separate email and
if you're added as a co-teacher on other
teachers classes you'll be getting
emails for those classes as well now
another strategy here would be to set up
a filtering system in gmail so that all
your google classroom emails are routed
to a particular label that you could
just check at one time rather than
having them all go into your inbox and
if you want to learn more about that as
well as other gmail tips then be sure to
watch that video above