You may be here because you’re intrigued, or because your district is pushing for the digital direction- either because your district has signed on with Google Classroom- or supplying a limited amount of paper to help maintain the budget. I’m here to tell you how you can use these digital resources in your class, whether or not you have access to Google Classroom.
If you use digital resources in your classroom, you probably already know the benefits of going digital. To name a few:
- Less paper
- Less curse words in the copy room *wink wink*
- Digital Interactive Notebooks do not require scissors, paper, or glue (which also means less MESS)!
- Easier Grading
- Students can keep track of their work (no more the dog ate my homework excuse!)
- Easier organization at your fingertips
- Digital resources can be used to supplement paper resources if you aren’t ready to go 100% digital!
- Google offers a lot of time saving applications for teachers, like Google Quizzes.
- You can add comments right in the document!
Here is a video preview of some digital classroom activities designed for Google Drive:
Now, maybe you’re thinking- but wait! I don’t have Google Classroom in my school! It’s super duper easy. Though teachers can’t access Google Classroom as individuals, you can still use digital resources using Google Drive. All you need is a Google account .You can have many Google accounts- in fact, I have four!
There are a couple different options for using Google Drive in your classroom- a shared option and a non-shared:
Option #1
Make a shared Google Account- I repeat- SHARED Google account for your classroom. This will be for not only you, but for your students to access. With this in mind- keep it simple because students will need to refer to it- something like – [email protected] (but definitely not [email protected] keep it as simple as possible!) Something like BiologyWHS would do the trick. The password should also be simple and easy to remember.
Once you have your class Google account, have each of your students create their own folder in Google Drive (it should be their name). Since it is shared, they can’t edit the privacy settings- which is something to consider.
When you create or add a document, you can select all the folders/students you’d like to share with my copying to that specific folder. That will be theirs to edit.
Option #2
Have your students make their own individual accounts. You would probably do this if it was super important that all students have confidentiality. It’s completely up to you. You will also need to have your own account.
To share with your students, you can easily do this using Google+. Warning: it takes a bit of time to set up, but once you get the hang of it, it’s easy peasy. You can find more information about here: Google+ and Google Drive to use Digital Resources in the Classroom.
If you’re fortunate enough to have Google Classroom, the sharing is even easier. You can make a copy for each of your students to have. They can use digital notebooks on computer, Chrome books, or iPads. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
Here are some digital resources for your consideration:
