
How To Use Google Drive In The Classroom
by TeachThought Employees
How did they do it?
Academics again then…they created, distributed, and recorded every little thing on paper. They spent hours getting into grades, calculating averages, and handwriting notes to be displayed on the board through now-antiquated overhead projectors.
Fashionable technological improvements have revolutionized the probabilities for academics to create, collaborate, assess, and have interaction. For a lot of academics, instruments like Google Drive are an integral element of their day-to-day educating and assessment-related actions.
See additionally What Is Google Drive?
Why Use Google Drive?
Google Drive is a free, cloud-based storage system that homes quite a lot of information. Customers can create and share folders inside Drive, in addition to add quite a lot of file sorts into current folders.
By clicking the ‘New’ icon within the prime left nook, Google Drive customers also can create initiatives utilizing Docs, Sheets, Slides, Types, and extra choices.
With as much as 15 GB of free storage, Google Drive is an interesting possibility for academics on the lookout for a central hub to retailer, create, distribute, and revise tutorial supplies and educating instruments.
Of the 1000’s of the way academics can use Google Drive, we now have researched the 12 methods for Google Drive that finest help classroom educating and studying. Let’s check out how one can simplify your tutorial practices whereas enhancing the training expertise to your college students.
How Can Academics Use Google Drive to Assist Classroom Studying?
Create an eBinder for every scholar utilizing Google Websites
+ New > Extra > Google Websites
Not solely can academics use Google Websites to create a category web site, however they’ll additionally use it to create a template for an eBinder. Every menu possibility can coincide with how college students would label their dividers for bodily binders.
Inside every menu possibility, academics can create separate pages that home important paperwork, assessments, and assignments. They may commit one web page to a journal and one other web page to a bit the place college students can maintain observe of their grades.
As soon as glad with the format of the eBinder, it’s time to make a person copy for every scholar. Merely find the File possibility on the highest left, then click on ‘Make a Copy.’ Academics can embrace every scholar’s identify within the title, then share the brand new website with every scholar.
From there, the instructor can spend the primary week modeling how college students ought to use the eBinder. College students can create a private profile on the house web page or get began on a Desk of Contents. They will additionally add assignments that the instructor can immediately view and touch upon.
Gone are the times of shedding observe of papers and homework – by holding all class supplies saved in an eBinder, it makes it simple for the instructor and scholar to take care of a feedback-focused dialogue.
Share a single folder the place college students can entry/submit all shared information
Proper-click > Share > Enter electronic mail handle(es) > Permit viewing entry to anybody with hyperlink
If holding observe of 20-30 separate eBinders doesn’t sound interesting, take into account making a single shared folder the place college students can entry all related course paperwork.
From brief tales and uploaded movies to notes templates and self-evaluation kinds, Google Drive can home all forms of information, together with PDFs, PNGs, and MP4s.
Making a single shareable folder eliminates the all-too-common, time-consuming situation the place college students try to entry a non-public doc and the instructor should then grant entry to every scholar.
Drive copy Google Docs/Sheets/and so forth
Proper-click Google Doc /Sheet > Share > Change hyperlink settings to ‘Anybody with Hyperlink’ > Substitute ‘edit’ and every little thing after it on the finish of the hyperlink with ‘copy’
Wish to give college students entry to a doc whereas nonetheless preserving it for future use? The compelled copy perform is likely one of the finest presents bestowed to academics from the Google geniuses.
Many academics use the compelled copy perform with a fundamental quiz. Wherever they share the hyperlink to the quiz, they’d merely substitute ‘edit’ and every little thing after it on the finish of the hyperlink with the phrase ‘copy’, in order that when a scholar clicks the hyperlink, they are going to be offered with the query, “Do you need to make a duplicate of this doc?”
From there, college students can edit their copies of the identical doc and share it with a instructor or to a Google Classroom project when they’re achieved.
Create a kind to elicit suggestions or create an evaluation
+ New > Google Types
With Google Types, academics can’t solely create a quiz, reflection kind, or survey – they’ll additionally import all responses to a single Google Sheet file.
When contemplating evaluation, this makes it simple to conduct merchandise analyses for particular person evaluation questions, calculate class or part averages, or observe progress over a semester.
By importing the responses from a mirrored image kind, academics can analyze college students’ general emotions and ideas associated to their private progress and areas the place enchancment is required. This is usually a highly effective software with regards to figuring out small teams and differentiating content material.
For academics seeking to enhance, they’ll use Google Types to create and share a mid-semester and last semester analysis. There’s a toggle the place academics can gather electronic mail addresses for every response; in any other case, they’ll go away it closed in order that college students can submit nameless responses.
Permit college students to collaborate in real-time
Click on the ‘Share’ blue button within the prime proper nook > Immediate one scholar to share the file with group members by getting into electronic mail addresses > Grant viewing/commenting/enhancing entry as applicable
Maybe top-of-the-line capabilities of Google Drive is that almost all of its entities – together with Docs, Sheets, and Slides – permit for real-time collaboration. Naturally, this perform is beneficial with regards to distant educating and eLearning.
The true-time collaboration perform is nice for WebQuests, scavenger hunts, group evaluations, jigsaw actions, and extra advanced group initiatives that contain a number of roles and assignments.
Google Drive additionally retains observe of enhancing historical past, so academics can look and see who has contributed what items to a selected doc or spreadsheet. The instructor also can immediate higher-order considering by including feedback to a shared doc. College students can resolve feedback as they determine options or reply to the instructor in the event that they search clarification.
Co-create lesson plans with division colleagues or co-teachers
Click on the ‘Share’ blue button within the prime proper nook > Immediate one instructor to share the file with others by getting into electronic mail addresses > Grant viewing/commenting/enhancing entry as applicable
Whereas many departments specific a want to collaborate on curriculum and tutorial supplies, class scheduling priorities make it troublesome to commit a single planning interval to the identical group of academics. Co-teachers inside an inclusion class could expertise the identical frustration.
Simply as college students can collaborate on paperwork in actual time, so can academics work asynchronously to create compelling lesson plans and be certain that every instructor is aware of their function(s) for the lesson.
By importing lesson plans to a shared division folder, academics can then return to the paperwork to touch upon what labored and what didn’t after which revise them for future use.
Present suggestions to scholar work by including feedback
Inside a doc, spotlight the textual content for which you want to present commentary > Click on ‘Insert’ on the prime menu > Click on ‘Remark’
Many academics lament the truth that they spend a considerable period of time offering commentary on assignments that college students by no means learn as soon as they obtain the grade.
One approach to encourage college students to learn and apply suggestions is to delay the grade. Academics can add feedback on a doc or spreadsheet that immediate college students to make particular revisions or issues. As college students resolve every remark, the instructor will obtain a notification of their electronic mail.
After a given interval, the instructor can return to the doc to see how the coed utilized the suggestions, then share a grade primarily based on a rubric or scoring information.
Maintain observe of scholar grades utilizing Google Sheets
+ New > Google Sheets
Whereas many college districts use instruments like PowerSchool to maintain observe of scholar grades, it’s at all times a good suggestion to maintain a backup file. Google Sheets is a perfect software to accommodate scholar grades, and academics can maintain the information confidential in order that nobody else can entry the non-public data contained inside.
By sustaining a separate spreadsheet, academics even have extra freedom to “mess around” with scholar grades with out impacting the PowerSchool grade.
What will we imply by “mess around?” Let’s say that it’s close to the tip of the semester and there is just one main evaluation left. One scholar who has a C+ is decided to attain a B by the tip of the semester, they usually genuinely need to know what they should do to perform that.
The coed can meet with the instructor to take a look at their grade ebook on Google Sheets and the instructor can enter totally different grades within the evaluation column that – primarily based on capabilities – will reveal a hypothetical general grade.
Moreover, a instructor may create a spreadsheet the place grades are entered and college students can see how they carried out on an project in comparison with different college students within the class. After all, scholar names could possibly be left off for privateness functions, and the instructor may use random numbers to determine college students.
Reward college students with saved badges created utilizing Google Draw
+ New > Extra > Google Drawings
A gamified or points-based classroom administration system can function an effective way to encourage college students. Academics can use Google Draw to design badges that they may then use to reward college students for prosocial behaviors, like delivering assignments on time, being a constructive chief, serving to a classmate, or making use of suggestions.
Inside Drawings, add a component to function the canvas for the badge. Subsequent, add traces, pictures, textual content, or different objects contained in the badge to point the that means of the award. Academics can then give every badge a file identify and share it with a scholar publicly throughout class to strengthen constructive behaviors.
If college students have created eBinders, they’ll retailer their badges on the homepage as a reminder of what they’ve achieved and the way they’re able to contributing meaningfully to a category atmosphere!
Create interactive shows utilizing Google Slides
+ New > Google Slides > Insert > Select from obtainable choices
A few of us could bear in mind the times of spending a whole 75- to 90-minute highschool class copying traces of textual content from a chalkboard. Fortunately, Twenty first-century technological improvements have paved the way in which for extra partaking presentation of tutorial content material.
When designing slides, academics can embed audio or video information meant to immediate dialogue and higher-level considering. They will embed pictures and hyperlink textual content to supplementary web sites, dwell polls, collaborative dialogue boards, or formative assessments like Kahoot! and Quizlet Reside.
Google Slides additionally permits the creation of charts and tables, which might be helpful for presenting quantitative data after which prompting college students to make conclusions primarily based on the information.
Design a seating chart utilizing Google Slides
+ New > Google Slides
For academics, seating charts are sometimes residing paperwork that change primarily based on tutorial or behavioral wants.
Inside Google Slides, academics can create rectangles to characterize decks and transfer them inside the slide in keeping with the place they exist on a classroom map.
As soon as all of the desks are within the right formation, the instructor can then add a textual content field and group the objects, in order that if the instructor strikes the bodily classroom desks into a brand new formation, they’ll simply rearrange the desks inside the slide.
Academics might also discover it helpful to color-code the bins for designated forms of college students (i.e., college students who want to sit down up entrance, college students who have to be separated from each other, or college students who work properly in pairs/teams). Moreover, they’ll color-code desks the place college students share a selected lodging.
If a instructor must take an absence, he/she will be able to simply print off a duplicate of the seating chart and go away related notes for the substitute instructor.
Use voice dictation to file ideas and concepts
Click on ‘Instruments’ inside Google Doc > click on ‘Voice Typing’ > Toggle the microphone on/off as wanted
Some college students are higher in a position to gather their ideas by writing them down, whereas others favor to speak concepts out. Google Drive’s varied entities embrace a microphone that, when clicked, begins to file voice dictation.
College students can toggle the microphone on when it comes time to brainstorm concepts for a writing project, delegate obligations inside a gaggle undertaking, or share a response to a query or immediate.
Academics and college students alike can use voice dictation to supply suggestions to different college students.
College students who obtain lodging for studying problems associated to studying and writing might also discover the voice dictation perform extraordinarily useful and empowering.
12 Roles For Google Drive In The Classroom