http://www.google.com/edu/classroom/
What is it? How does it work?
A preview of it in action:
What have I learnt so far?
Through experimenting with @DHSBandyguy I have learnt that it is so easy to use, a simple platform for setting learning activities or homework and brilliant that it integrates with the rest of Google Education so for a school or teacher using the other services it is great.
I recently set up Classroom for one of my new classes in September and whilst doing this I wanted to experiment with it with other people on Twitter when we were discussing it. However through trying we discovered that you couldn’t invite others from outside your Google education organisation even if they were Google Edu users.
Some initial gripes that I think will be adapted following feedback are:
Terminology – my students don’t get ‘turn in’ their work, may be a minor thing for some people but I would like to be able to customize this.
Marks out of 100? I may not set something to be out of 100 therefore once again I want to be able to change this as often as I want to whatever I want.
I want an integrated dashboard – where is my calendar? Google plus? Or whatever I want to add to my ‘dashboard’ or my ‘home screen’ I want to be able to do this.
I want a collaborative space for students to work together but I guess you could do this over other Google Edu apps or other tools.
I want to share this with parents. I guess I could ask students to share it with their parents but should it be their choice? How many 13 year old boys talk to their parents about homework? Could there be the possibility of making this visible to others?
The other slight concern about fully embracing and becoming dependent on this is that this could be another ‘Google Wave’ which you will remember as the collaborative messaging platform. What happened to that?
However I do feel this is probably around to stay, which will be interesting to see the impact that it makes on the VLE Market in a year or two. So I guess we all need to watch this space… I am sure it will look different in 6 months and 12 months if it is still here…
If you are experimenting with Google Classroom then keep me posted and also make sure you feedback to Google once you have set up your account by clicking on the feedback button as that is the only way we will get it to evolve.