In 2019, bring your classes into the 21st century with a virtual classroom! Whether you’re working in a single classroom or teaching students from overseas, a virtual classroom brings teachers and students together in a way that was only possible with correspondence schools in years past.
There’s a lot of competition for online classroom management systems like Class Dojo, Google Classroom, and Schoology – free and paid. Check out this list of the most popular platforms where you can read brief reviews and compare pricing. Be sure to check out my two other posts in this series about Learning Management Systems: ClassDojo and K-12.
In this post, I’m going to focus on Google Classroom; a web service for schools, non-profits, and anyone with a personal Google Account. Google makes it easy for learners and instructors to connect—inside and outside of schools. You can distribute assignments and connect with students, staff, coworkers, and parents. Create assessments, schedule workflow, and generate reports in one easy-to-access portal. With Google Translate, you can create and translate documents into one of 52 languages making communication with non-English students and parents so much easier. Best of all, it’s free.
Click on these links to learn more about Google Classroom, watch an introductory video below, or read this FAQ. The first video is a brief visual introduction.
This tutorial video gives you a more detailed look at setting up classes, adding course content, and communicating with your students.
Take a look at these reviews and tutorials to spark some ideas for your own classes!
Easy breakdown of Google Classroom on Wikipedia
5 Reasons to Implement Google Classroom
454 Reviews of Google Classroom
3-Part Tutorial on creating a language quiz in Google Forms
50 Apps you can use with Google Classroom
Teacher review after one year using Google Classroom
Google Classroom Ready!
Looking for content to experiment with? Kinney Brothers Publishing has lots of digital files to get you started! Below are some free files that you can download and try in your virtual classroom. Make puzzles, work with flash cards, or assign worksheets! Check out our popular Digital Activities and Flash Cards. We also have the complete Stories For Young Readers series ready to upload with audio, dialogues, and answer keys!
All the files below were created using Google Slides and are ready to be uploaded into your Google Drive.
If you have experience on a particular platform, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Help a teacher out and leave a comment below.
As always, best of luck in your classes!
Donald Kinney