What is Google Classroom? How can we use it?

Google Classroom is a brand new tool from Google, which is been listed under Google Apps for Education. To use Google Classroom, one has to create an account with Google Apps for Education. This means, you cannot use Google classroom with your existing Google accounts unless it is created for Google Apps for Education. It is a free pack of tools to increase productivity an it includes Gmail, Drive and Docs.

It is an app which is made to help teachers and students in managing school assignments easily. They can send out feedback to each other instantly, efficiently, and communication between the teachers, students and peers develop because of this app.

Classroom also helps students in creating and organizing their school assignments through Google Drive, they can complete and upload their latest files, teachers can do the corrections on their files and the students can make the changes as and when required.

Google Classroom is made to establish a direct communication among the teachers, students and peers. Apart from this, even the guardians can keep a record of what is been taught and what is the current status of their children with their studies.

The app is available only for students, teachers and institutions who have opened a school-provided Google Apps for Education account.

Benefits of Google Classroom:

1. I found the concept of Google Classroom to be extremely helpful, particularly in the current scenario of education in India. It saves time, keep the classes organized. It will automatically reduce the burden of carrying unnecessary books to the school. even if a student misses few classes, he can easily make up with the backlogs and be updated with the class.

2. It is Easy to set up as the Teachers are allowed to add students directly and share a code with their respective classes to join.

3. Eco Friendly- Google Classroom is a simple paper-free app where nobody has to work on papers, carry them and finally waste them.

4. It improves communication between students, teachers and guardians. So it is most beneficial for the parents of the backbenchers, as there would be hardly any chance to hide their lessons and school assignments from their parents.

Google Classroom is a Google tool that helps teachers in It is part of Google Apps for Education category. It lets you create, distribute and assign projects without the need for paper. It is easy to use and can be accessed on multiple devices.

It is a combination of different Google apps Creation and distribution is done through Google Drive, while Gmail is used for communicating.

The Google Classroom has mobile apps as well for Android and iOS.

It has many advantages associated with it.

1. It will be a paperless way of achieving things. You just need to create a Google Doc for each student.

2. It is a great way to avoid copying. The Google Docs for individual students do not reside in a shared folder. The communication would be between the teacher and the concerned student.

3. It helps you achieve effective communication. You can create
an assignment and share it with your students. It will be immediately available in their Google Drive.

4. It speeds up the assignment distribution. You can create an assignment and distribute it through your group of students with just a single click of a button. In the similar way. your students too can complete the task and submit the assignment within a few minutes.

5. It improves the feed back process. You can provide online support to your students.

However, there are certain disadvantages associated with Google Classroom -

1. Account management is a little difficult. You will not be able to log in to it through your Google account. You will need to log in through Google Apps for Education.

2. Google classroom is not integrated with Google calendar or any other calendar. It can cause issues in assignment deadlines.

3. Integration with other regular tools is not available. For instance, you will need to convert a simple Word or Excel document to Google Doc. It could be frustrating for the first time Google users.

4. There is no automatic update. Your students need to refresh it manually.

5. Once you create and distribute the assignment, your students can edit it. They can even delete parts of the assignment.

Let's answer your queries regarding the Google Classroom.

What is Google Classroom?

Google classroom is a cloud application designed to help the school and colleges through distributed learning management. The app is available only to the schools and the educational institutes with access to the Google Apps service. The service is accessible through web and the Android App using the Google Apps for the education domain category. The software is similar to most of the LMS (learning management system) apps in the market.

However there are some of the pros of cons of this LMS too. Some of the benefits of the Google classroom system are as follows -

1. Notification system and assignment tracking is a good feature.
2. Teachers can keep track of students progress.
3. Grading and feedback process is really good.
4. It reduces repeated instructions and teacher's time and this way teachers can focus on content.
5. It can be cheap option for those non-profit educational institutes with limited IT budget to digitize their process.

Some of the issues with Google Classroom.

1. As of now, you can't integrate streaming videos or saved videos into the classroom.
2. Free access is only available for non-profit educational institutes for certain add-ons.
3. Material design is harder for the kids or new students or even teachers to get used to for navigation.
4. Not much data is available for parents to monitor progress.
5. Add-ons for the google education are limited (unlike commercial addons access).

How can we use it?

You have to first sign up to the Google Apps for education plan. And once you signed up and add your domain into the Google apps, you can further use the add-on "Classroom" from the dashboard. Do note that you have to also do few other settings and configuration in order for you to use the Classroom service for your educational institute. Once you set the Google classroom set up for your domain, you have to add the school and generate the school URL. This also includes custom google apps mail service for the school too. This way the notification to the students and teachers go through that add-on.

After setting these things, your admin needs to setup the teachers in the school. Once the teacher are setup, they can add students and set the assignments and other activities. When any such activity is done, students get the notification. Also after finishing assignment teachers get notification on the competition of the assignment from student side. You as a student or teacher have to follow through the respective activity assigned to you. Teacher and students both get access to other apps such as Docs, Spreadsheet and presentation apps which they can use for assignment.

Is it available in India?

It is available in India and other countries too. Only restriction being the educational institute has to sign up for the educational plan of google apps. And they have to setup the google apps for the school for using the classroom. Currently google classroom is not available for non google apps users. It may available to others in future.