10 things in Google Classroom (You might not know about)

Here are 10 functions in Google Classroom that you might not know about …

1. Look for the lines and the dots – When you see a button with three lines or with three dots, you can click them for more options. The three lines usually denotes the main menu; the three dots usually denotes more actions.

2. Get it right the first time – When a teacher or student logs in to Google Classroom for the first time, he/she must choose the correct role — student role or teacher role. If he/she chooses the wrong role, the Google Apps IT administrator will have to be contacted to change it.

3. Put classes in order – If you teach multiple classes, when creating those classes in Google Classroom, create them in reverse chronological order. By doing that, they will display in chronological order in Classroom.

4. Don’t overload the About tab – Only add the most important, year-round links to your About tab. If you overload it with too much content, it will become difficult to find anything there!

5. See the student side – To see what the students are seeing, ask a colleague to invite you to one of his/her classes. That way, you’ll be a student in that class and you’ll see what Classroom looks like as a student.

6. Set comment settings – Take control of your Google Classroom stream (where students see all the assignments, posts and other content) by deciding what students can do. Options include:

• Students can post and comment (students can write their own posts and comments for the class to see)
• Students can ONLY comment (they can’t write posts but can comment on teacher’s posts)
• ONLY the teacher can post or comment (students can’t write posts or write comments)

7. Save it for later – You can prepare your announcements, discussion questions and assignments for use later without publishing them immediately. Write them now and click the drop-down button next to “Assign” to save them as a draft.

8. Assign without a Google file – Students don’t have to turn in a Google Document, Slides presentation or other file to submit an assignment. If the assignment doesn’t require a file, the students can click “Mark as done” to show the teacher that he/she has completed the work.

9. Add more than one – You can add multiple files, videos and links to an assignment. Be sure to include everything the student needs, and maybe offer multiple options the student can choose from!

10. Download your grades – Get a spreadsheet of the grades for an individual assignment or for all assignments. When viewing grades, click the settings gear wheel in the top right corner and choose “Download assignment grades” or “Download all grades.”

Via Matt Miller at Ditch That Textbook (Originally from:  Kasey Bell, author of the Shake Up Learning blog, has produced a very thorough, clean and easy-to-understand guide to Google Classroom. Her blog is full of great useful Google content, and her “Teacher’s Guide to Google Classroom” is no exception.)