Bye Bye to “My Dog Ate My Homework”
By Erin Schilling
In February the School District of Superior launched Google Apps for Education. Since then these online tools, coupled with face-to-face activities, have allowed students and their teachers to communicate and collaborate in meaningful ways. Google Classroom is one tool in this suite of apps that helps to organize this process.
Teachers Turn to Google Classroom to Organize Coursework
Teachers log in to Google Classroom to set up assignments for their students. These assignments can include links to videos, websites, or documents. Teachers can require their students to review the material and complete tasks to share their learning. Once their students complete their work, teachers can provide feedback online.
When students log in to Google Classroom, they see the assignments their teacher has posted. They click on links to resources and complete their tasks online. They submit their assignments to the teacher by clicking a “Turn In” button at the top of the screen.
The Power of Google Classroom
Because Google Apps for Education allow for efficient communication between users, teachers can give their students timely feedback and support as they work through assignments. Work is saved digitally on the students’ and teachers’ Google Drives, so the excuse, “My dog ate my homework,” won’t fly anymore.
Students can collaborate with each other without having to be in the same room at the same time. This asynchronous collaboration can fit nicely into busy schedules and can spread learning beyond the classroom walls.
Google Classroom has other benefits as well. Students can pause and re-watch videos, take collaborative notes with their classmates, and pose comments and questions to their teacher or experts around the world. Students can prepare for a day’s learning prior to stepping into the classroom.
Even when Google Classroom is used to organized in-class activities, students have access to new perspectives and primary sources of information. This leads to a deeper understanding of the material.
Impacts on Student Learning
Ryan Haroldson, principal, says, “Google Classroom has raised the level of student engagement at Great Lakes Elementary. Students are benefiting from the quick feedback they get from their teachers and peers. This real time feedback is allowing students to grow exponentially as writers.”
This summer, Advanced-Placement students from Superior High School got a jump on their fall AP courses. They accessed course resources through Google Classroom so that they could come prepared for high-level thinking. This type of off-site learning replaces the need to spend valuable class time reading articles and completing worksheets.
Lindsay Braman uses the tool in her elementary classroom at Lake Superior Elementary. “Google classroom has provided me ways to reach my students’ needs via technology. Last year we did writing assignments on our Google Drives and I used the comments feature to provide quick feedback to my students. Using the Google Drive and the sharing feature allowed me to reach many more students than I could with only classroom conferencing.”
As teachers and students become more adept with the Google Classroom, it is apparent that this tool is revolutionizing the classrooms of the Superior School District, and giving our students a sound basis in technology that is so very important in today’s world.
Heather Krull, second grade teacher, uses it with her young learners as well. “I can have a page where I post assignments with video links and articles and have the students respond, using their reading and writing skills as well as their higher level thinking to compare and contrast information. I can link websites to the page. The students can ‘blog’ on the page. The students email their pen pals through their Google Mail.”
And classroom teachers are not the only ones setting up Google Classrooms; many school leaders are using Google Classroom to organize professional development opportunities for their staff.
Teachers at all levels are learning about the most effective ways to implement technology into their instruction. Google Classroom is another tool that can help them organize activities to increase student achievement.
