How Google Classroom Can Help Improve Your Own Classroom

 

 

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At present, a number of technological tools are available that help our teachers and educators to provide a better learning experience. Throughout the years, Google significantly participated in the betterment of education by offering easy access to academic content and affordable tools. Google Classroom, their latest offering, is set to offer further assistance to teachers and schools in advancing education. 

Google Classroom for Your Class

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Although Google Classroom was initially offered to only a few educators in July, soon it will be available to all the schools that use Google Apps for Education. I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the initial testers of Google Classroom and I was genuinely amazed by the simplicity of the tool. It effortlessly integrates Google Docs, Drive, Sheets, Gmail, and other tools to offer a brilliant and effective user experience. 

A Greatly Designed Tool

 

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It has a remarkable design and a simple interface. Moreover, it does not include any needless distractions and enables you to concentrate of productivity. It is perhaps the best tool for teachers to organise and share assignments, coursework and class announcements. It is also an excellent and safe way to communicate for both students and teachers. You can easily exchange ideas and educational content with your learners with this intelligent tool. You will get the best quality user experience with this Google product. 

Here are 3 superb things that you can do with Google Classroom to enhance your own classroom- 

Have Paperless Classrooms Environment 

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If you are a teacher who wants to have a paperless classroom setting

then Google Classroom is surely for you. It enables you to access students’ work instantly and digitally organise different aspects of your classroom work. Moreover you will be able to control multiple classrooms. Google Classroom allows you to develop and allocate announcements and assignments to every class; edit student work for revision; grade students’ performance; start and partake in private or entire class discussions and many others. 

You can have a paperless assignment workflow which will remove all monotonous and lingering tasks that eat up most of your instructional time. You can effectively use this additional time for teaching. With Google Classroom, you can interlace Google Docs, Gmail, Sheets and Drive to eradicate the requirement of hard copies.

Take Flipped Classrooms Approach

 

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Google Classroom is the best tool for you if you intend to flip a whole class or a specific lesson. This excellent Google product significantly enhances the ability of the flipped classroom customise learning for all learners. It also encourages students to take ownership for the progress of their learning. 

You can easily deliver presentations video or audio lectures and other reading materials to students outside the classroom. Your students will be able to access the content easily and also have a secured opportunity for online discussions with you and other teachers as well as with fellow students. This can greatly help to clarify misreading and help them to understand the content. 

Focus on Professional Development

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Although Google Classroom is developed for classroom use, but both teachers and students can utilise it for their own personal development by using the educational technology in creative ways. Districts and schools can effectively use Google Classroom to manage and deliver content for professional development of development. 

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Presenters or trainers can set up a training session or class and introduce the teachers or participants in the class. They can also just send an email with the access code to the session. The trainer can share different resources like documents, multimedia files and presentation with the participants before, during, or after the class. Before, during, or after the training, the presenter can share with the participants a number of resources such as presentation slides, multimedia files, and other documents. 

After the session, Google Classroom will help to create a folder in the Drive and automatically save all content. The participants or teachers can then access the materials from the training and review them later. This will help the teachers to better use Google Classroom and help their students in their learning. 

What do you think about Google Classroom? Do you believe it can enhance your classroom experience? Feel free to share your views and opinions. We would love to hear from you.

How To Use Google Glass In The Classroom

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Innovation in learning and education has traditionally faced many challenges. Teachers and students have always followed proven methods when it comes to education. However the scenario has started to change, especially after the advent of online learning and MOOCs. Google has always been popular for innovations and its latest presentation, the Google Glass, might drastically change the way we teach and learn in the future.

Google Glass may not be widely popular yet, but it is undoubtedly gaining ground. The entire concept of having a display in front of your eyes providing you information in real time, which still seems somewhat like science fiction, have certainly grabbed the attention of several people, including me. But being in the education field I started thinking how can Google Glass be used to improve education. The fact is it can be used in quite a few ways in the classroom.

The features offered by the device have massive capabilities which can used be along with some unique classroom based ideas to help students learn better. Although some ideas may not be suitable for particular institutes, but it can definitely help several classrooms. How? Let’s have a look...

Google Glass in Education

This unique and innovative device has great potential which can help us to take education to a completely new level. Let me point out a few excellent uses of the device in education-

• Remote Teaching
• Providing Supplementary Material for Lectures
• Helping in Student Orientations
• Helping in Monitoring Students
• Offering a Close Look at Lab Work
• Helping in Better Medical Training
• Documenting Field Trips
• Helping to Learn While Participating
• Providing Tutorial Videos to Students
• Helping in Student Performances and Presentations
• Enabling To Record Lectures In Classes
• Helping in Monitoring Attendance
• Assisting Teachers to Capture Notes
• Helping in Remote Project Work by Student Groups
• Assisting In Performance Evaluations

But these are only a few uses of Google Glass in education. When used properly, the device can prove to be highly beneficial for campuses and classrooms. Let’s read how-

Enabling Teachers for Better Lectures

Educators can wear the device while giving lectures and start Google Hangouts with students who may participate in the sessions remotely. Google Glass may also be used as a back-up resource for the teachers to gather detailed and unplanned content when asked by the students.

Helping Students to Understand Lectures Better

Students attending the lectures may use the device to bookmark essential sections, take notes and even access additional content offered by the lecturer. It can also help foreign students to have real time translations while the lecture is being delivered.

Simulated Field Trips

It can be used to provide simulated and interactive field trips to students, especially for places that are hard to access like Federal Reserve Bank, LHC at CERN, Mountain ranges, war zone experiences, the White House and even outer space.

Providing Location Specific Information

Google Glass can help to try out QR codes throughout the campus and provide location specific information as the device can instantly interpret QR codes.

Offering Self-Guided Tours

Glass can be offered to prospects and visiting students to provide self-guided tours of college or university campus. It can automatically identify landmarks, detail the history of the institute and answer student queries.

Improving Sports

Google Glass may also be used in school or college sports and athletics like basketball, tennis, baseball, football etc. The players can use the device while playing and receive real time instructions from their coach. Students can also view video recordings of their performance to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

Do you think I missed something? Can you think of any other uses of Google Glass in education? If you have some other ideas then feel free to share with me. I would love to hear from you.

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Google Capital Invests $40 Million in Online Education Company

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Google Capital, which is the late-stage investment arm of the American multinational corporation Google, has recently invested $40 million in Renaissance Learning through their new growth-equity fund. Renaissance Learning is one of the foremost cloud-based K-12 education and assessment platforms for children. This new investment makes the overall valuation of the Wisconsin-based education technology company at $1 billion. Google Capital, launched one year ago, will now own a minor percentage of Renaissance Learning. Moreover, the Board of Directors of the learning analytics company will now include a representative from Google.

Jack Lynch, CEO of Renaissance Learning, said “We didn’t need the capital, but it definitely opens the door for many other opportunities.” He also said that the company has strong revenue. Although Renaissance Learning may not be as popular as Google, it has a strong presence in the online education field. The European equity firm Permira owns the majority in the company which was established in 1984. Lynch claimed that around 20 million students and one third of American schools use their cloud-based educational software and solutions offered by Renaissance Learning.

The analytics company currently provides a wide array of web and desktop-based assessment and learning tools. However, its main focus is on offering a data-driven approach to education for both students and teachers. With the help of cloud computing, the software facilitates educators in designing better lesson plans for the learners. The programme enables the teachers assess the students’ performance and track their progress in different subjects. The educators can also use gathered data to find out alternative solution and support their students in writing, reading, language arts and maths.

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Lynch said that their tools offer “very precise insight into what students will know in order to calculate and determine better sequencing.” He also said that the teachers can use the programmes very easily. Educators can get access to the cloud data from their tablets, laptops and desktops. Suppose a 4th grader encounters a problem with understanding out fractions, then the educator can simply input the information into the cloud based system, and solutions will be instantly provided through the its analytic channels.

Google has made several efforts for the development of education over the last few years like launching Google Apps for Education, Chromebooks and the recent online interactive learning tool Oppia. The search giant also provides various other resources and lesson plans to the educators. But it has not offered any online assessment solutions yet. Currently both Google Capital and Renaissance Learning are still working out the details of the deal. Renaissance is planning to utilise the added funds to work on the products and solutions that are placed in the pipeline.

Google Ventures had also financially supported an e-learning applications start up company, Subtext, in 2011 by investing $3 million. However, Renaissance purchased Subtext later. So the current investment from Google may be utilised for development in this area. This investment can also prove to be beneficial for Google as it provides educational versions of well known Google products like Chromebook Computers, Google Docs, Gmail etc.

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Oppia- Google’s New Online Interactive Educational Project

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In the present day, technology has become essential in the development of education all over the globe. Various new technological tools are being introduced continuously for the betterment of teaching and learning. These modern tools have made education interactive and engaging that helps the teachers as well as the learners. Google has actively participated in the advancement of education over the years and has significantly contributed towards reforming the process of learning. The company has extended its influence in both and traditional and online classrooms through Google Apps for Education, Chromebooks, Android and Play-powered tablets as well as its support to online courses and MOOCs.

Google has recently launched Oppia, a free interactive online learning platform that is set to modify the way we teach, interact, learn and share knowledge. It is an educational tool with quick feedback which lets you take lessons depending on the answers you provide. Oppia is an Open Source project that lets its users develop new online academic activities via web interface. Both teachers and students will be able to share their opinions, teach and learn through presentations, mapping and drag and drop options.

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Oppia assumes the function of a mentor and asks relevant questions of the users and thus improves interactivity of the platform. The response of the learner to the questions will then help the teacher to determine how to move forward with the lesson. Google said that it is a smart feedback system which aims to teach the users to learn various topics and skills.

One of the strongest points of Oppia is its interactivity which many tech-based learning tools lack. This interactive feature is known as Explorations. Students and teachers can communicate with one another with this online platform easily. Explorations are basically interactive educational activities which you can create from anywhere in the world and help others to learn from it. As the platform is developed for everyone, you will not be required to have any programming knowledge for creating the explorations. The users can create interactive lessons with text, numerals and multiple choice options. It also supports specific tools like a code evaluator and a clickable map.

Oppia gathers data how students and other learners interact with the content and the explorations. This information is then provided to the exploration authors, so that you will able to fix the mistakes in the lessons. This will help the interactive feature to gradually improve and help the users to understand the lessons better. You will be able to improve the explorations as you gather more information with time. Moreover, you can also embed the explorations into websites. Apart from these, the learners will also receive personalised feedback after they submitted the answers on the explorations.

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Google said that the motivation for Oppia came from the fact that most of the other online educational tools are asynchronous and static in their content delivery. Presentations and video lectures are not interactive enough and thus they usually fail to encourage active participation, dialogue, discussion, and student feedback. Google assures that the intelligent feedback system of Oppia will enable the teachers to modify their explorations through feedback of the learners and the answers they provide.

Furthermore, you will also be able to collaborate with other users to create or modify explorations and the platform also allows to associate different parameters with different learners. As a result, you will be enabled to develop deeper and better interactive lessons.

However, as of now, it is not certain how much support Google will provide for the improvement of Oppia. Its homepage clearly mentions that Oppia is not an official Google product. This indicates that the multi-national corporation has no intention of investing too many resources or manpower into the development of this project. Google is now expecting that computer experts and developers from around the globe will take charge of the educational platform and eventually the online community will look after the repair and maintenance of Oppia.

Nevertheless, the fact is the online educational platform is a useful and learning tool that will surely help a lot of students and learners worldwide. In the near future, the system may also be used for variety of purposes other than education like an extensive feedback system for teachers and companies.

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