1. Set up your classes.
2. Add to your feed.
3. Grade student work.
4. Managing your Google Classroom
5. Tips and tricks for Google Classroom
6. Save time in Google Classroom
7. Find more Google Classroom resources and ideas
Read Ditch That Textbook posts on Google Classroom:
Docs
Shared notes. Students often have lots of information to share with each other when they work together as a group. By sharing a document with group members, they can all add ideas and resources — and see everyone’s changes in real time. Teachers can use this in committee work and at staff meetings.
Rethinking rough drafts. With the comments feature in Documents (and other Google Apps), rough drafts aren’t a paper students submit to a teacher. They’re a process. Teachers can guide students throughout the entire writing assignment so there are no surprises when it’s time to turn work in.
Slides
Shared presentations. Create a presentation with one slide per student and give students permission to edit it. Then assign an activity — some quick Internet research, a writing prompt, an image search to find an example, etc. When they’re done, show the presentation on a projector. It’s student work instantly on display.
Practice with the shared presentation below:
Animation. This is a great hack (i.e. non-traditional use) of Google Slides that could take some time to complete but yield amazing results. Check out this video, where the creators made an impressive animation with 450 slides in a Google Slides presentation just by clicking through the slides quickly.
Create a PDF ebook: PDF files are about as universal as it gets. You can open them on almost any Internet-ready device. They’re read-only, so publishing a PDF is a good way to distribute information to be consumed by reading. Google Slides is a great, simple PDF ebook creation tool. Create a slide presentation, change it to the dimensions you prefer, add content and finalize by going to File > Download as … > PDF Document.
Create a “slide deck book”: This idea is inspired by Matt Macfarlane, a middle school history teacher from California. In true “Ditch That Textbook” fashion, he has turned from traditional textbooks to creating his own. He finds engaging content on the web and collects it in his “slide deck books.” His students access them online and can click links to get more information. He gives students a “everyone with the link can view” link so they’re read only. Some examples:
Play a “Jeopardy!” game: Jeopardy on a PowerPoint presentation has been a staple in many classes. It’s also possible to create via Google Slides.Eric Curts, a Google Certified Innovator, created this template that you can copy into your own Google Drive to customize with your own questions and answers. Keep track of score on a whiteboard/chalkboard, on paper or through some other means. (Note: When a question is answered, it doesn’t disappear from the board. You might want to display the game on a whiteboard instead of a projector screen. When a question is selected, draw an X through it with a dry erase marker.)
Choose Your Own Adventure story/activity: As a child, I loved these books, where your decisions affected the outcome for the character in the story. Google Slides lets you create similar experiences. They can be stories where the student can choose the path for the character. Students can create them, or teachers can create them for students. They can even be tied to any kind of class content. Tie the choices to answers for a question. (i.e. The character goes left if the student thinks the answer is 4.4 and goes right if the student thinks the answer is 7.2.)
I created a quick example of an impromptu, decide-on-a-whim vacation trip story where you decide for the main character. Click here to see that file (and feel free to make a copy and change the text for yourself!)
Assess with self-grading quizzes. Self-grading quizzes give students immediate feedback. They also let students practice as much as they’d like without depending on the teacher. You can create self-paced assessments that provide answer feedback with Google Slides. For each standard four-question multiple choice question, you’ll need five slides:
On the question slide, for each possible answer, create a link to the feedback slide. Then, on each feedback slide, create a link to go on to the next question.
Want to see an example? Click here to see my quick one-question self-grading quiz.
Quick blog: Blogging is a useful reflective activity that can generate a lot of online conversation among students. A quick, simple version of blogging can be created in a Google presentation. Create a shared presentation (see No. 1 above), and have students write a short “blog post” in their slides. They can even add images (see No. 5 above). When complete, students can read each other’s writing and write comments on them using the comment button in the toolbar. Conversations stay grouped together when students reply to each other using the “reply” button. This creates meaningful conversation with very little prep time.
Drawings
Graphic organizers. Drawings gives users a blank canvas where they can add text, shapes, lines, etc. When done, they can save their work as image files or PDF files and can add those images to documents, slides and spreadsheets. It’s a perfect medium for creating graphic organizers. I’ve created 15 of them that can be copied, saved, changed, tweaked or completely redone to fit your needs and your students’ needs.
Interactive whiteboard. Create a Google Drawing and share it with students, giving them permission to edit. Display the drawing on a projector screen. Students can add text and shapes, draw arrows to important ideas and connect concepts with lines. Everyone can make changes, and anyone can watch — in class or away.
Real life comic strips. Take photos of students using a webcam and add them to a Google Drawing. Add speech bubbles to the photos. Then save those images and add each one to a different slide in a Google Slides presentation. Here’s a Google Site about Comics with Google Tools and Creativity Games for examples and more details.
Timelines. Students can work together in a Google Drawing to add text and pictures to mark events on a timeline. When they’re finished, the image can be saved as an image file (JPEG or PNG) or a PDF file. It can also be embedded in a site to share with others.
Annotate images. A picture is, of course, worth a thousand words, but it can also teach important lessons. Let students manipulate that picture, and they can create meaning and own those lessons. Add an image to a Google Drawing and let students add text boxes and arrows, pointing out various parts of the photo that are of interest to the class.
Interactive posters. Google Drawings are great for bringing images, text and shapes together. Those elements combine for a great digital poster. But these digital posters are way better than a regular one made of poster board. Various elements in the poster can be clicked, delivering webpages and other online content to viewers. Click here to see Matt’s recent blog post on how to create Google Drawings interactive posters.
>>> 10 engaging Google Drawings activities for classes
Mapping Tools
Google Maps Street View –Street View makes it possible to drop your classroom virtually onto almost any street in the world and walk around. It uses panoramic imagesthat let you turn around, zoom in and walk down roads to check out the scenery. Just grab the little yellow “peg man” and drop him where you’d like to go. (See animation above.) For practice, try dropping yourself at your doorstep of your school if you’ve never used it before.
Street View Treks – Once you’ve seen your school from the curb on Google Maps Street View, take it to the next level with Street View Treks. These custom-produced exploration experiences are awesome for students. They provide information about the location and videos that pair nicely with the panoramic views. Locations include Nepal, Gombe National Park, the Pyramids of Giza, the Great Barrier Reef (a Street View Trek underwater!) and more.
Google Cardboard — It’s a VR experience starting with a simple viewer anyone can build or buy. Once you have it, you can explore a variety of apps that unfold all around you.
Google Earth Tour Builder — Tour Builder is a new way to show people the places you’ve visited and the experiences you had along the way using Google Earth. It lets you pick the locations right on the map, add in photos, text, and video, and then share your creation.
Google Cultural Institute – These virtual tours don’t have to be confined to what you can see from the street. Google Cultural Institute gives you access to top-notch art collections from around the world (Art Project) and modern/ancient world heritage sites (World Wonders). Witness significant moments in history with Historic Moments, giving students a version of a field trip to the past.
MyMaps – Creating or viewing an interactive map with images and information can be the next-best thing to visiting a location, and students can create their own. Kurt Wismer’s great resource site for using Google Maps and Google Earth shows you how. Have students create a map using MyMaps. Select locations, use custom icons, add photos and share.
Geoguessr – This game is like asurprise virtual field trip every time you play. Geoguessr uses Google Maps Street View and places participants in a random location somewhere in the world. By panning around, zooming or “walking” down the street, participants place a pin on a map to guess where they are. The closer they guess, the more points they win. It’s great for critical thinking and using context clues.
Smarty Pins – Smarty Pins is like Geoguessr’s cousin. Granted, it’s a little less like a virtual field trip, but it does use geography-based questions to play. Participants answer questions bydropping a pin where they think the answer is.