Teaching with Google Classroom

370 Pages·2021·22.44 MB·English

by  Michael Zhang, Safari, an O'Reilly Media Company.

Teaching with
Google Classroom
Second Edition
Save time and stay organized while delivering online
and in-person classes
Michael Zhang
BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI
Teaching with Google Classroom
Second Edition
Copyright © 2021 Packt Publishing
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Group Product Manager: Pavan Ramchandani
Publishing Product Manager: Rohit Rajkumar
Senior Editor: Keagan Carneiro
Content Development Editor: Abhishek Jadhav
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First published: September 2016
Second edition: May 2021
Production reference: 1260521
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-80056-592-0
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To my loving wife, who continues to support me each and every day.
To my rambunctious daughter, who was the main source of distraction
while writing and is the greatest joy in my life. To the editors, project
managers, and team members of Packt Publishing, who kept me on track.
To Jason Renner, who helped test all the Apple devices and is always willing
to discuss ideas. To all my teaching colleagues who shared their thoughts.
Thank you all.
– Michael Zhang
Contributors
About the author
Michael Zhang is a Google for Education Certified Trainer. He has an education and
science degree from the University of Alberta and works within the Edmonton Public
Schools division in Canada. He applies Google's Workspace for Education daily within
his classroom. Michael has spoken at several teaching conventions and facilitates
technology training in Google Apps, Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, Windows
and Apple products, and other software. His experience helps him to communicate about
technology in a comprehensible manner to his audience. He believes that technology
should save time and improve productivity and hopes that this book does just that for
its readers.
About the reviewer
Benita Moyers is a kindergarten teacher in Alabama. She serves on the board of directors
for the Alabama Education Association. As a board member, she volunteers throughout
the state to provide in-person and virtual educational technology training workshops.
In 2019, she became a Certified Google Trainer. Since the pandemic began in 2020, she
has used that training to help educators, parents, and students learn how to use Google
Classroom and other Google Workspace for Education tools to navigate the new virtual
learning environment. Due to her experience with Google, she was asked to serve her
school community as the virtual kindergarten teacher for the 2020–2021 school year.
During this time, she also worked with the National Education Association to write
a blended learning module for social and emotional learning, which she facilitates
on their learning management system. She has assisted fellow writers by providing
mini-coaching sessions for Google Workspace tools.

Table of Contents
Preface
Section 1:
Getting Started
1
Getting to Know Google Classroom
Creating your first Google Class 4 Adding files and resources to your
Classroom 17
Navigating around Google
Classroom 8 Reordering materials in your Classroom 24
Storing files in your Classroom 25
Personalizing your virtual
Classroom 10 Inviting additional teachers 26
Changing the Classroom's theme 10 Accessing Classes from Google
Uploading a banner image 13 Classroom's home page 28
Summary 30
Managing resources in your Class1 6
2
Inviting Students to Their Virtual Classroom
Setting up Google Classroom on Allowing students to join using
student's devices 32 the class code 48
Setting up Chrome on computers and Joining a classroom with the class code 48
Chromebooks 33 Inviting students to your Class with an
Installing the Classroom app on tablets invite link 52
and phones 44 Making changes to the class code and
invite link 53
Managing students in your Class 54 Emailing students in your classroom 59
Manually inviting students to your Class 54
Summary 60
Removing students from your classroom 58
Section 2:
The Basics
3
Sending Your First Announcement
Creating an announcement 64 Disabling all email notifications 79
Scheduling a time to publish an Disabling email notifications for
announcement 67 certain classes 80
Advanced features in announcements 68 Customizing email notifications 81
Making changes to an Commenting on announcements 82
announcement in the Stream 75 Replying to comments 84
Reusing a previously created Managing comments 84
announcement 76 Disabling comments in the Stream 88
Managing announcement email Summary 89
notifications 78
4
Starting an Online Discussion with Questions
Creating a question 92 Creating multiple-choice
questions 103
Additional features in a question post
not found in an announcement post 93 Grading a question 106
Leaving a question ungraded 110
Creating short-answer questions 95
Viewing a returned grade 110
Student view 97
Summary 112
Replying to student responses 101
5
Handing Out and Taking In Assignments
Creating an Assignment post 114 Adding additional files to assignments 136
Sharing files in assignments 118 Unsubmitting and resubmitting
assignments 141
Viewing student files 120
Turning in assignments late 142
Viewing student files in Google
Classroom 120 File ownership for assignments 142
Viewing student files in Google Drive 129 Summary 143
Turning in assignments 134
Section 3:
Diving Deeper
6
Grading Written Assignments in a Flash
Assigning a grade using the Using a rubric to grade
Grading Tool 148 assignments 170
Providing feedback with private Creating a rubric in the Grading Tool 170
messages and comments 152 Grading an assignment using a rubric 177
Adding comments to student files 153 Reusing a rubric from another
Assignment post 180
Using the Comment bank 156
Creating a rubric using Google Sheets 182
Replying to and resolving comments 159
Managing comments in Google Docs 161
Using a tablet to provide
Suggesting changes to a student file 164 written feedback 185
Monitoring student progress with
Viewing all student grades 190
Version history 165
Summary 192
Avoiding plagiarism with Originality
reports 167