Google Classroom is an innovative, new, and effective way to teach (read: reach) a new generation of students. Google Classroom is easy to navigate, simple to use, and uses a social media type of interaction that billions of people across the globe have become familiar with, meaning there is a low degree of learning curve for students who are new to the Google platform and the associated applications.
I like the ease of use of Google Classroom, many people who are still in the business of teaching were originally trained in education before the boom of the internet and online learning began, meaning that even though they know they need to utilize other teaching methods such as online classrooms they need to "go back to the classroom" and learn how to use these programs themselves, creating a laggard effect in adopting new methods of teaching. Refreshingly, the platform seems to have been built around the idea of simplicity. In addition to a few other features, the home screen has two interactive tabs labeled "Announcements" and "Assignments." As a teacher, you simply click and post, as a student you only need to click and absorb.
It is easy to add students to the classroom by invitation with a pre assigned code or to invite the students through an email.
You can customize the course with some background graphics and with some creativity and organization you can create a more complex classroom with discussion boards or other course customizations to your liking, but essentially Google Classroom has decided to keep it simple.
I wasn't able to access the Google classroom but one of the YouTube video I watched described the simplicity of the platform as a possible limitation. I might agree with this statement if I didn't consider the learning curve technology limited instructors and they constancy barrage of new technologies being released and introduced every day, requiring us, that is all of us regardless of what field you might be involved in, to learn a new platform, new logins, new passwords, it can be exhausting which in turn makes the introduction of new technologies a limiting factor of new technologies. I appreciate the simplicity Google Classroom offers.
In addition to exploring what I could in Google Classroom, I also explored, with teaching in mind, a few other Google apps including Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Forms. I think these two apps could easily and seamlessly integrated into any face to face course making the course interactive on another level and/or could be utilized in an already existing online course.
To illustrate this I would like to take a course that I currently teach for the university and outline how I can use these two apps in my online course.
I teach ANS 1319 - Introduction to Animal Science online, the course is exactly what it states to be and is an introduction to basic concepts covered in animal science, of the many things covered in a semester animal rights and animal welfare concepts are covered in this course. Traditionally I would introduce the concepts and introduce the ideas of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare to the students with video, online curriculum, websites I encourage them to visit, and perspectives from both sides of the debate. I then have the students debate (in a face to face course) the concepts or discuss ideas on a discussion board (online course) and write a summary paper based on research and experience from the course. Losing the debate in the online forum is something I hated doing but couldn't figure out how to address, with Google Docs and Google slides I can assign groups and they can create an effective debate and research paper together, in real time if they organize it that way.
As the instructor I would be able to utilize Google Forms to organize test and quiz materials and distribute questionnaires to the students allowing them to take ownership of the course by voting on which concept to address the following week or what concept needs more attention.
It allows the teacher to use a student centered model of teaching that new students are comfortable with, it forces interaction of online students past the simple discussion portion of most online classrooms, and it facilitates the experiential learning component that is so hard to facilitate in online forums.
In addition to the course and topic learning outcomes designated by the instructor the students also learn how to interact with people in an online environment, the learn how to navigate technologies they may be unfamiliar with, they learn how to collaborate with their peers, and how to present material electronically.
The friendliness of Google to education is outstanding. I have spent many years avoiding Google because of the comfort and east I have with the traditional face to face teaching model. However this lesson has left me with some questions I would like to address concerning Google educational materials and how to better utilize them in my courses.
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