Google Classroom for Student Teachers
Hello everyone!
I'm a GCU site supervisor and I wanted to share how I am distributing and collecting work for my student teachers. I’ve been working with my teacher candidates via Google Classroom. Over time I learned how to get the most from this platform, I use it now to store my teaching resources and notes for conferences as well. My colleagues have mentioned that they use Google Drive to store everything, but for me that can get overloaded, I find I that I need additional structure to help me stay organized! I use google chat or my phone for meetings and conferences, but Google classroom helps me track everything, and although the students are not set up to interact with each other, they can message me and post reflections and feedback, and there is also a message area after each assignment if your student has particular questions/comments about that assignment .
My students are often happy to see conference dates, assignments, weekly check-ins and announcements all posted in their classroom. Recently I spoke to one student and she said she had general college overwhelm, and was thankful that I made the evaluation part of it clearer for her by putting everything in the Google Classroom in her assignment area! I would love to hear if anyone else is using this platform, or what are you using instead to optimize your workflow?
Thank you!Jackie Marinelli
3 Replies
This is great, Jackie!
I had never considered Google Classroom to be a repository for resources, but I use Wakelet for that purpose, and have a very unorganized and overloaded Google Drive repository, so can relate to your notion about that immense tool.
At another university where I facilitate courses for pre-service teachers who are working toward their certification, we have one course focused on technology integration in GEN & SPED. Learner expectations involve creating a Google Classroom LMS within each module allowing the scholar-practitioners an opportunity to learn how to design interactive, engaging, adaptive, and accessible microlearning assets. At the end of the semester they have a functional online (or hybrid) course they can use as a portfolio of their work. I am excited about your suggestions and cannot wait to share the potential for them to utilize this resource as a repository and effective ways to connect with and support their learners.Thanks again for a wonderful strategy that will help so many others!
Thank you Kathryn!
Your work is very interesting as well, I like the idea of the hybrid course being used for a portfolio!
For my teacher candidates, I set up individualized communication and assignments in one classroom. It works well because it keeps their comments and questions confidential and students have different start and due dates and putting them together would be confusing. I create announcements in the Stream for all and/or a particular student. The first assignment I create will be their specific due dates with instructions of what is due and how materials should be presented /details. The following assignments are basically all materials that I collect from them; lesson plans, videos, feedback forms are all posted in an "Evaluation Assignment" so for one semester each student gets 4 large assignments. In that assignment area I can see what they have done and when. I will post the fall schedule for all to see, and upload some of the documents/forms they may need. Cooperating teachers are offered access, as some have asked to be in the google class with their student teacher, but most of the time they choose to send feedback and communicate via email or phone.
Communication on the phone and video call is welcome by appointment usually, this can be difficult with teacher candidates being in the classroom during the day, working on their other coursework, and tending to families, maybe even working, then coordinating with our schedules too. I originally thought we could also communicate via classroom, and you can especially on particulars a certain announcements, or questions pertaining to materials, that is fine, but for conversation/meetings, I offer access to a google chat space, (which can connect to google meet if you want video calls), so anytime convenient, google chat is excellent and can be accessed through the classroom or g-mail. Students will text me initially, but I don't want to miss their texts or be distracted by everyone else's texts, so they are soon invited to their own chat space where whether asynchronous or real time, all questions are addressed, check -ins and chat or video meets can take place!
Thank you!
Jackie
Thank you for offering more details about your strategies, Jackie.
This sounds like a highly organized and confidential communication system for teacher candidates, cleverly leveraging Google Classroom and Google Chat. I appreciate the ability to manage individualized assignments and ensure everything is accessible. And, I was thinking about how convenient it would be to use the private comment feature within the evaluation for assignments to provide feedback on specific collected materials like a lesson plan or a video.
Again, thank you for some excellent ideas I can share with my pre-service teachers!