Editing a Google Site

It's almost impossible to teach in 2014 without having some sort of digital space to supplement your classroom. Having a place on the web where we can store and share digital resources is so incredibly valuable. So much class time can be saved when students don't have to spend it searching for items that you can easily share in a Google Site. A Site is Google's version of a wiki. 

Keep in mind that this is a very generic template. Feel free to delete pages that you don't need, change the names of pages, and add additional pages. This is your site so please change it so that it works for you! All we ask is that you don't change the theme so that all classroom sites across the district maintain a consistent color scheme which will help us develop our brand. 

Ideas for how to use a Google Site: 

• Add a classroom or school calendar to help students (and yourself!) keep on track. Parents appreciate seeing school activities in a calendar. 
• Share pictures or videos of your students as they work on activities. Think of this as a sort of digital newsletter. (Parents like to see what is happening in class!) 
• Share your lesson plans. Create them on a doc or presentation and upload them to a page on the Site. 
• Know in advance that you will be gone? Create a screencast that allows you to virtually teach your class. Upload it to YouTube and embed it on the Site. Google helps you be in two places at once! 
• Have students create a Google Site and link them back to your classroom Site you can easily access them. You could do this for student blogs as well. 
• Have a list of acceptable activities that students can complete when they finish their assignments. 
• Showing a video in class? Embed the video in a Google Form where you also include questions. Embed the Form in your Site so students who are absent have easy access to it. 

The only limit to what you can do with a Site is your own imagination. Here are TONS of ideas for how to use Sites (wikis) in your classroom. 

Google Classroom

Stacy Behmer and Chad Kafka are both Google Certified Teachers and I was lucky enough to see both of them present at the Great Plains Google Summit back in July. They both believe it is better to share knowledge than hoard it so Stacy was more than happy to give me permission to share their presentation on Google Classroom.

One of the most daunting challenges to going paperless is figuring out how to get organized. If you don't have a solid system for creating, collecting, grading/commenting, and returning digital documents to your students then you are going to get overwhelmed very quickly. Until recently many teachers used scripts and add-ons to manage this, but it seemed like a lot of work to get started. Back in the spring Google announced a new product called Classroom which promised to make managing documents easier. Rumor has it that Classroom will be available to all teachers on Monday provided their district has it turned on.

From what I have been able to see so far I think that it looks like it is pretty easy to use. I like how it automatically puts assignments into folders then shows who has turned in assignments and who hasn't. You can open the docs and leave comments and you can comment when you return the assignment as well as leave comments that students will see when they open your class. You can post announcements, discussion prompts, news articles, or anything else you want to share.

One suggestion that Stacy made was that elementary teachers might want to set up one class that has all students then have each student set up as their own class to make it easier to assign different assignments to different students.

I will keep tinkering with it so I can help you out if you decide to use it. While there are other services such as Hapara (which is an AMAZING service!) that organize more apps than Google Classroom, this is a good alternative.

If you have suggestions on how you intend to use Classroom or if there are things you have figured out while you have been playing around with it please share them!

Keep in mind that Classroom is brand new! There will probably be lots of changes in it in the coming months and it might not always work as you expect. Be patient as Google works out the kinks.

Webinar Wednesday

On the first Wednesday of each month beginning in September I will record a webinar to share here. There will be a variety of topics shared so check back frequently!