As most of you know, last year we conducted a pilot, involving close to 50 teachers, for the use of Google Classroom to see if it had the potential to replace Finalsite as a teacher’s web presence. Once the pilot was in full swing, the MITT committee surveyed teachers, students, and parents to see how they viewed Classroom. The big takeaways from these surveys: Teachers loved the way Classroom streamlined the workflow of collecting digital work, and many came to rely heavily on Classroom for everything and no longer had a need for Finalsite; students found turning in digital work to be much easier with Classroom but did not like having some teachers on one platform and some on the other. They asked that the district please choose one — Finalsite or Google Classroom. Some parents were frustrated that they were not able to log into Google Classroom without their child’s credentials and found the weekly email updates to be insufficient and/or difficult to set up. Many were not able to receive Classroom updates because they did not have Google accounts. However, since the survey was conducted, parents can now subscribe to email updates with any email address, thereby greatly increasing parent-teacher communication.

With these takeaways in mind, the MITT committee decided that Google Classroom was not ready to become a replacement for Finalsite. Instead, MITT recommended a plan, which the BOE eventually approved, that would allow all teachers to use Classroom as another G Suite app but still list homework assignment descriptions where all parents have easy access—Finalsite.

While continuing to post homework to Finalsite may seem redundant and enough of a deterrent to keep you from exploring Google Classroom, consider all the time you spend sorting through your Google Drive’s Shared with me folder to find and organize student work. It’s never fun. Here is where Classroom really shines. Instead of submitting work by sharing it with you through the Google Drive interface, students submit their work through Google Classroom assignments. This is much better for teachers as Classroom organizes student work for you, allowing you to view, comment on, and return student work without ever having to look at your Google Drive.

If you’ve never used Google Classroom and you’d like to learn more, I’d be happy to help you set your classes up and show you how to navigate it. I’m also doing a 4-part series on Classroom as part of Polson’s 20 Minute Monday after-school workshops, which all can attend (2:50-3:10). In the meantime, if you’d like to explore more on your own, here’s a YouTube playlist that covers the in’s and out’s of Classroom, or to get started, you may want to view the following presentation I’ve been using during PD activities.