Meg Tufano is co-Founder of SynaptIQ+ (think tank for social era knowledge) and leader of McDermott MultiMedia Group (an education consulting group focused on Google Apps EDU). We have been checking out Google Classroom – with her as the teacher and me as the student. I include some of Meg’s bio here as it is worth noting her extensive experience designing and teaching online courses for more than a decade.
Meg posted a Google Slides review of her initial experiences using Google Classroom from a teacher’s perspective, which I am sharing below with minimal commentary. The review includes annotated slides showing the various features and Meg’s comments.
I have not done as much work to show the student view, but I will note the following:
- The student view does not include the link to the Chrome Store that Meg finds to be too confusing.
- The biggest challenge I’ve had so far is managing my multiple Google accounts (you have to be logged into the Google Apps for Edu as your primary Google account to enter Classroom, which is not that intuitive to students).
- I wonder if Google will continue to use Google tools so prominently in Classroom (primary GDrive, YouTube, GDocs) or if the full release will make it easier to embed non-Google tools.
- I have previously written “Why Google Classroom won’t affect institutional LMS market … yet”, and after initial testing, nothing has changed my opinion.
- I have one other post linking to video-based reviews of Google Classroom here.
Great information on classroom. Last week, I led a professional development for our teachers using Google Classroom. All attendees were students in my class. I included assignments with attachments, youtube videos and an assessment to demonstrate the use of Flubaroo for automating grading. It worked out well. I will share your informative article with the staff.