Signing Up for Google Classroom

Google Classroom is something that has been around for a little bit.  And, I am going to be honest with you, until this past week, I couldn't have cared less about it.

I know.  I am a blogger who uses technology in my own life on a consistent constant basis but in the classroom, I was lucky to get my ELMO to work long enough to play a little GoNoodle.

However, this past week, I was in a jam.  I needed the kids to type something up for our librarian and the computer lab was in use all week.  I was faced with the prospect of checking out our chromebooks (which I am well aware of just how lucky I am to have access to three class sets of them), and typing on there.  My computer teacher suggested we use Google Docs.  So I checked it out and...my MIND WAS BLOWN.

Since I am new to this, and maybe some of you are too, I thought I would start a blog series for you documenting my experiences with Google Classroom and all of the wonders it holds as I learn about it.  Today's post is just about how I signed up and used the FREE service for the first time in my classroom.  This is not everything, nor is it the be all, end all of Google Classroom, however it will help to get you started.

The first thing you need to do is sign up for Google Classroom.  It is very simple.  Type classroom.google.com and it will take you to the site.  Now, as far as I can tell, from playing around with my own email addresses, you need a school email to sign up.  Once you are on, you can then create a classroom.

Once that classroom is created, you can invite your students to join.  They need an email address, which my students are assigned from the school district.  We used those.  They also sign on to classroom.google.com and enter the code for my class and automatically they are connected to me! How cool is that???

When they were assigned to me, this is what they saw.

That's right.  I had assigned them all a comprehension quiz to take.  You see, the night before I had created that doc using a Google Form.  It let me input a reading passage, create questions, decide if I wanted them to be multiple choice or short answer, and then generate the test.  I was able the to assign it to my class.

Once the kids took the quiz and submitted the answers, I automatically received the answers in the form of a Google Sheet (which is just like excel). There is an app on the Google Sheet that helps to transfer the excel to a Google Doc (like Word) so I can easily read and grade the responses.    Then, I can go back in and assign a grade to the test, so the kids can have their grades right at their fingertips.

After giving just this one test, I am hooked and in love.  I know there are SO many things I can do with Google Classroom (peer collaboration, shared writing, etc...) and that what we did is just the tip of the iceberg.  I can't wait to see all that this has in store for us as the year goes on...and I can't wait to share it all with you.

How do you use Google Classroom in your room???  I want to know everything so please share!