Google Classroom by Guest Blogger Amy Taylor

Google Classroom allows students to learn just about anywhere--often at their own speed. Many teachers, though, bemoaned the fact that Google Classroom didn’t allow sharing of information with guardians. Well, that feature is now here. I want to tell you about the benefits of Google Classroom guardian access, warn you about a few quirks of the feature and offer a few tips.

Parents can now choose to receive Google Classroom summaries weekly or daily. The summary includes missing work, upcoming work and class activity. A parent only needs to sign up once, even if the student is in multiple Google Classrooms. If you don’t want to use the feature, you simply don’t turn it on as an option in Classroom.  You can even email individual parents directly using classroom.

While there are benefits of Google Classroom, there are a few quirks with guardian access. First, you must manually invite each parent and hand enter their email address. Second, while you can send the invitation to the email address the parent used at registration, the parent must register with a gmail account in order to receive summaries. Unfortunately, using a gmail address is required, but is not clear in the communication to parents who simply receive an error message with no explanation that they need to register with a gmail account.

My recommendation? Try out Google Classroom’s Guardian Summaries, but first send an email out using TAC explaining what the feature will allow parents to do. In that email, ask the parents to create a free gmail account and email you that address. With their gmail accounts, send the invitation.

Guest Blogger: Amy Taylor

A Calhoun Middle School Language and Literature teacher, Amy Taylor is a chronically-just-a-little-late adopter of new technology. She doesn't yet tweet at @mstaylordenton but will someday soon.