Google for Education: A Step-by-Step Guide for Classroom Integration

What is Google for education?

Google for education is a pack of Google products, including Google Chromebook, G Suit, Classroom, and Expeditions, that make classroom management and lessons efficient and effective. The aim of Google for Education is to organize information and tools in a useful structure and make it accessible for teachers and students, and to help them collaborate in real time to learn effectively.

These tools are free and you can use them on any device. They are secure and maintain the privacy of students and teachers.

How you can use Google for education?

Google has various tools that can be used to learn about concepts, collaborate, organise learning material and manage classrooms and related events.

We have covered the following Google for education products that can be of use to you:

1. Google devices (Chromebook)
2. G Suit
3. Google Classroom
4. Google Expeditions

Google Devices

To use G suit, Google docs, Classroom, etc., you can use any device. For Google Classroom, both students and teachers need to have access to devices, in-school or at home, to be able to partake in the activities. Whether only teachers or both students and teachers have access to devices depends upon the budget you have, and the depth of digital integration you want in your learning environment.

If you already have devices for yourself and your students, you can start using the Google for education products right away. If you plan to buy devices, you can explore which computers fit your budget and requirement.

Although, you can use any device to integrate Google for education products in your learning process and classroom, you can go for Google Chromebooks, as Google devices are affordable and easy to manage for classrooms and schools with the help of Chrome education license.

You can buy a Google Chromebook?for only $149 and above. Google chromebooks make G suit and other Google apps for education easily accessible to students and teachers. (If you buy using this affiliate link, you can support EdTech Post in keep bringing you relevant industry products.)

Chromebook apps are curated and available in bundles like Active licensing, Creative, Media literacy and STEM tools, for students and teachers to use. This will save you the time to find suitable apps for your classroom. You can just look up a relevant theme on your Chromebook, and access all the prefered apps related to it.

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A school can manage 100 to 100000 chromebooks with the help of Chrome education license. If you are a school-admin or a teacher, you can use the Chrome education license to push apps and extensions, enable and disable hardware, enable cloud printing, customise chrome web store, etc. for each device in the school or your classroom.

Whether you have access to Chromebooks or any other device, you can integrate the following Google productivity tools on your and your students? devices, so that content creation, assignment, evaluation and management becomes easy.

G Suit – Productivity tools for education

Google apps for education, ?now called G suit for education contains various tools that help learners and educators access information and collaborate.

Gmail:

It helps you communicate, add and manage contacts, and add events to your Google calendar.

Calendar:

It helps you manage your personal and class schedule at one place. You can share your schedule with others. Google Calendar can be integrated with other Google apps for education. It also shows you the due dates of assignments on your calendar.

You can add appointments from your Gmail conversations to your calendar. You can check the availability of the people you want to to collaborate with and set meetings accordingly, and join Hangout directly from your Calendar, when you receive a meeting notification.

Classroom:

Google Classroom helps create, share and grade assignments. It helps keep a classroom?s data organized. You can read more about this tool in the next section.

Google Docs, Slides and Spreadsheets:

You can use these tools to create and share content and collaborate.

Google Docs are convenient to create documents anywhere, anytime. You can save your work at school, and resume it on a different device at home or anywhere in the world, as the data is all saved in your Google Drive. You can use the dictation tools to type your documents.

Google Docs has a new feature called Explore, with which you can use Google Search without leaving your document. This tool is located at the bottom-right of your window when you are working on Google Docs.

Similarly, Google slides can be used to create presentations and lessons.

Google sheets are used to organise and analyse data. The built-in formulae, chart-making options, formatting options, etc. help do spreadsheet tasks easily. You can even collaborate with others to work on your data. Explore feature in google sheets helps analyse trends and data in your sheets, and even in Google Forms.

Google Forms:

You can use Forms for surveys, tests, polls, data collection, etc. You can even add GiFs, videos and various formats of questions in Google Forms.

Google Drive:

This is the storage for all your learning and teaching collaterals like Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, and whatever else you?d like to save to be used in classrooms, presentations, etc. You can even share your documents with others, so that all the collaborators have access to them. Google drive also serves as the storage for your Google Classroom-related documents.

Google Sites:

You can create a website for your class or team, using Sites. It?s a simple to use and requires no coding.

Hangout:

This can be used to have video, audio and text chat-based collaborations. You can even share your screen and add multiple participants.

Vault:

This tool can be used to archive your emails and chats. It’s free for G suit users. You can use its powerful search options to find stored content. You can also see a record of the use of your Vault account–logins, searches and views.

Google Classroom

We think that this is the primary Google for education tool, around which all the other tools revolve to make classroom management and conduction easy and effective.

This tool is easy to work with, and has flexible controls to enable effective class management. A school can decide the functions students can undertake on Google Classroom.

If you are a teacher:

• Register on Google Classroom and Create a class?add class name, section and subject
• Invite students?by searching their email ID?s and sending them invites, or share with them your class code that they can use to join your class after logging into their Google Classroom account.
• Choose from one of the three settings for a class–Student can only comment, students can both post and comment, or only teachers can post and comment
• In the About section, you can add description of the class and the location where the class meets
• The Classroom calendar can be used to organise assignments and events for the class, and it is integrated with the your Google calendar
• The Class? Drive folder gets automatically created on the your Google Drive, with a folder named Classroom, which contains all the classroom material or assignment your publish to the class
• In the About section, you can add class study material?attachment, from Drive, Youtube, link, etc.
• Invite other teachers to the class using their email ID?s
• Add assignments to your Google classroom, post questions (short answer or multiple-choice), reuse posts, or make an announcement in the Stream section
  • The task can be posted right away, or scheduled for later, or a draft can be created to work on later
  • The task can be assigned to the entire class or one or a few students
  • You can enter a due date for the task
  • Link the task to an existing or a new Topic of study or discussion
  • Sharing options include: students can view, view and edit, or receive an individual copy in their Drive
  • Add grades to the submissions received from the students, and return the grades with private feedback to each student, if you like

If you are a student:

• Register on Google Classroom and join a class:

• Access your class material in About section of a class
• You will receive emails when assignments are posted in your classes
• Submit assignments by adding files from Google Drive or from a web link, uploading a file, or creating a Google Doc, Slide, Sheet or Drawing. After adding the file, you can turn it in
• You can unsubmit an assignment if you like to re-submit it later
• Check your grades and teacher’s feedback on your assignment

• Add a class comment on an assignment, task or announcement
• You can create a class to collaborate on assignments with other students

Now, there is a Chrome extension available called Share to classroom, which lets teachers and students share websites to their class directly from their browsers.

Overall, Google Classroom is great for a free classroom or learning management tool. They are even continuously updating it to improve the experience for the users. If you want to start digitizing the learning and collaboration process in your classrooms, then this is the product to start with. It?s wholesome, scalable, and free!

Google Expeditions

Google expeditions lets you take your class on a virtual trip to iconic places, monuments and events. You can show the class The Great Wall of China, or take them through various moments of World War II, or take them for deep-sea diving with the sharks.

All you need to use Google expeditions is a Tablet for the guide or teacher, who will conduct the tour, a wifi-router to connect the devices, and smartphones and Google cardboards for the students. You can ask students to bring their own devices, if it?s possible, or you can request the school to invest in a set of devices to conduct Google expeditions for various classes.

You can read about how to use Google Expeditions in your class, here.

When you see the children getting excited and squealing with delight upon beholding the Egyptian pyramids or a gigantic dinosaur?s skeleton, the effort and investment will be totally worth it.

It?s a great educational tool, and it offers ample of potential to make lessons engaging and fun.

More Google education products that we will elaborate on later:

• Google cloud platform
• Chrome browser
• Google search for education
• Google Earth education
• Google cultural institute
• Google scholar
• Open online education
• Google programmes for students and educators
• Google for Education training for Educators, Trainers and IT admins

We hope you found this guide to using Google for education products useful. Write to us using the comment box below if you?d like us to elaborate on any tool, or add more information to any section.

Also, do tell us about your experience of using Google for education tools?how they have helped you, what challenges you face, how your peers and students react to it, how ?you have integrated the process, or any information you?d like to share with us on this topic. We?ll be happy to hear it and share it with our readers.

We aim to enable teachers, school-admins and learners with knowledge about tools that can add value to their learning and teaching experience, and we hope that our users find them useful. Stay tuned for more EdTech product and user guides on this blog.