Google Classroom – Intro and set up

Introduction and set up

The first thing was to get the students into Google Classroom and in the AS Maths class. For now it is one big class with all of the students from the 3 classes so that I can do all of the admin and set up while Sharon and Ruth get used to it. Below are my plans with what actually happened.

The plan	The reality!
Log on and introduce yourself in the comments
There are a few quirks to logging on at the minute because it’s still a trial so I made some slides with instructions for students to log on. The first thing you want to do on anything new is say hello to your friends. Pressing buttons to see what they do and being silly is pretty much how I’ve learnt all of my computer skills so I’m going to encourage students to say hello to each other to start with.	The slides I made to guide students through the process worked well, I made a few minor tweaks but nothing major. Being able to have them in the class folder made it easy to share them with the other teachers on the course. Surprisingly students weren’t interested in saying hello or any of that so just got straight on with the tasks.
Announcement reminding students to fill in the maths evaluation form
We sent out an end of year evaluation to all of the maths students to find out about how some of the things we’ve tried this year have worked. Not many of the AS students have filled it in yet so this seemed like a good opportunity to get it done.	When I first posted the link I freaked out because next to the link to fill it in was one to review responses, that is not something I want students to be able to see in this case! It’s ok though I logged in with the pretend student account that IT made me and that’s not there for students so it’s all ok. Students got on fine with doing this though often didn’t click to say they had done it so needed reminding. I liked how I could keep track of who hadn’t done it yet really easily. I had it up while they were working so could remind students.
A question about which applied module students think they want to do next year
A nice straight forward question about what applied modules students think they might want to study.	This worked fine. One of the students said he’d like an option for not sure which gave me a chance to use the comments. I like how the answers are collected together and then if you click on a bar you can check which students gave that answer.
A doc with a profile to collect information about students other subjects and career plans done as an assignment so that they submit it and we can give feedback.
The profile isn’t very exciting and I actually know most of the information already but it would be nice to have it all in one place and I thought it would be helpful for their new teachers who pick them up next year.	Students were a bit confused about how to make a copy of it and how to save it until I explained that both things are done automatically. It was brilliant having their names and students numbers automatically in the title. Quite a lot of students wrote very brief notes but it was quite useful to see and is helping with developing a full profile to use across the year next year.