Google Classroom Benefits?

Candace Chesler
Candace Chesler
Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud K–12 Education Solutions™ General Discussions
During these past three months of Distance Learning - some of our teachers chose to create Google Classrooms instead of using the tools already deployed in K-12: bulletin boards, topics, assignments, gradebook. We have Google Drive integration established - but none of the other integrations that I'm seeing in other posts related to assignments and rosters.

From what I see - we have lost the ability for parents and advisors to quickly get an update on assignments for their students - and gained nothing.

Can someone share the benefits of teachers using Google Classroom over the features in the LMS?  

 
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Comments

  • Laura Rinaldi
    Laura Rinaldi
    Fifth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
    I, too, am very interested in this feedback.  We are in the process of installing the Assignments LTI integration between the two but wondering if we have the flexibility to use Classroom as the front end LMS and feed via LTI sync back to Blackbaud LMS?  Teachers like the interface of Classroom much better, but we still need the administrative and parent layer of Blackbaud...is this sync reliable??
  • Lisa Fusco
    Lisa Fusco
    Seventh Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
    I can only speak for our school but there has been a resistance to using the LMS features in Blackbaud because of the multiple "clicks". When creating a topic and sharing the breadth of details the fully integrated solution provided by Google is simplified with teachers in mind.


    Our faculty prefer Google's simple interface to the complicated way they work in the LMS. That said, they still use the LMS just creating a hybrid around Google Classroom. We were able to sync all their rosters quickly and set up Google Classroom integration with Google Meet so it was an all-in-one delivery system.


    IMHO..
  • Suzan Moffett
    Suzan Moffett
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1
    Lisa, we are considering doing something with both the LMS and Google Classroom. I am interested in your hybrid arrangement. Can you give more detail about it? It sounds like you somehow synced the Classroom rosters with the LMS info? Thank you! Suzan
  • Corrine Duncan
    Corrine Duncan
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
    We have found similar response from at least a group of our faculty as well and looking forward to allowing a more integrated feel for those that will use the Google classroom.  We would very much like to be able to have the rosters pull into Classroom from our LMS and push and pull any and all information that we can to reduce any duplicate work but also allow the layer of management layer as well.  


    Would love to get feeback/information on the susccess of being able to do so if you have had success in doing this. 
  • Andy Wright
    Andy Wright
    Sixth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
    Time and time again, I see and hear that Google Classroom features for assignments, are simply better than the BB LMS when it comes to ease of use and features. At this point, I'm not going to stress my teachers and require they use an inferior product, so I think the horse has left the BB barn and isn't coming back at my school. We use the BB gradebook for the 5th to 8th grade, so most do double assigning if they use GC. I would love to see an easy integration between Google Classroom and BB.
  • Maria Morrell
    Maria Morrell
    Eighth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
    I would also love to hear about a hybrid model. The Google Drive integration doesn't take care of the easy things that Classroom does (e.g. creating individual copies of docs for each student and sharing).  Classroom is just a lot easier interface, but we don't want to lose the calendar capabilities that we have in BB. 
  • Candace Chesler
    Candace Chesler
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
    Since my original post - we have decided to officially encourage teachers to use Google Classroom for assignments and sharing documents. Some of the driving factors were:
    • Ease of the Gradebook set up and integration with Google Docs for teachers
    • Parents can subscribe to receive email notifications on the frequency of their choice - so those that are begging for a digest of emails, will get one. (at least that's what I'm told)
    • The online - self paced - Google Classroom training available for free to teachers
    • Google Classroom can move us away from SeeSaw for our younger students - giving parents one platform to manage.
    Maybe we can have a session about Google Classroom during the Un-Conference this year so the experienced folks can share their successes and pain points.

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