Google Classroom for Online Learning ( Design a platform for learning)

The world has entered into the era of science and technology. Every sector is greatly attached with ICT. The ICT tools and technologies are integrated in every field. As a result, they have huge influence on education.  Among those, Google classroom is one of the most favourite and effective free web service (virtual platform) developed by Google in the recent times. It was initially released in January 2015 and stably released in April 2021. It is especially designed for educational institution and to create, distribute and grade assignments. According to Iftakhar (2016), it is a tool which aims and supports teacher to create and collect  assignment in a paperless environment. It is also effective for sharing files between teachers and student.  The teacher can post some teaching materials, assign tasks for students, and upload the students’ grades so that they can immediately see the scores obtained in the course (Okmawati, 2020).  Okmawati (2020) further explains that Google Classroom enables teachers to create an online classroom area in which they can manage all the documents that their students need.. But what separates Google Classroom from the regular Google Drive experience is the teacher/student interface, which Google designed for the way teachers and students think and work.

Google Classroom is a part of online Google apps which is productively used in learning by the teachers and students in collaborative way (Sudarsana et al. 2009). It integrates other Google apps including Meet, Docs, Form, Sheet, Slides, and Gmail, Calendar and Drive in to a cohesive manner for the interaction between student and teacher. It provides a place for the students to store their files in an organized and systematic way paperlessly in a room (Iftakhar, 2016).

In the present worldwide scenario of Covid-19 pandemic where the physical class is very tough to resume, the use of technology like Google Classroom is just like mandatory. It provides a virtual platform to establish a connection between teacher and students. Google Classroom ensure the easy access that enable both the teacher and students communicate in group or privately for every task posted by the educators (Salam, 2020).

Regarding the issues of effectiveness of google classroom in relation to the physical classroom and its challenge in primary level, google classroom is a Virtual classroom and an alternative form of physical classroom. The former does massive use of technology and the latter focuses on physical activities with limited use of technology. I think as a virtual classroom, google classroom can be used to perform most of the activities performed in the physical class room such as taking class, assign, evaluate and gradation. However, it can't address the practical activities like experimental works in science lab, attending in the physical activities while teaching and learning physical education etc. Everything has its limitations and see the opportunities beyond those limitations. There may occur some problems in primary level but we can minimize them. As we can see very young children are handling the apps like YouTube for watching videos, Facebook for uploading photos and Tiktok for making short videos. From which we can say that most of them can handle if we take initiation to co-operate with them. we can also educate parents about it. If somebody still faces problem we need to think about another option.

Features:

·         Easy access (create and use both for teacher and student)

·         Integration of different Google apps (Slides, Sheets, Drive, Docs and Calendar etc.)

·         Free

·         Mobile friendly

·         Flexible ( use it in both face to face  and fully online learning environment)

·         Sharing content (including video, link and images),assign, grading.

·         Reuse of content and assignment in the future

·         Time saving

Challenges:

·         Work load (Planning, preparing and presentation of class, selection of content) for many class a day

·         Lack of  ICT proficiency ( use and handle technology for preparing materials)

·         Attitude ( for use of technology)

·          Plagiarism

Implicatios:

 

·         Educational institutions can connect the institutions, teachers and students  in the preferred times, track students activities and keep related records .

·         Teachers can use it in both physical and virtual class for delivering their lessons, assignment, assessment and grading

·         Students can involve in the learning activities, doing assignments and  re use of the materials

Creating a Google Classroom

• Go to classroom.google.com or Google classroom app and sign in.
• Select the Teacher role.
• On the Classroom Home page, click the + symbol and then choose Create class.
• Give the class a title that is meaningful to you and your students.
• The following are optional, but may be relevant to your personal teaching situation: ...
• Click Create.

Watch the video about creating Google class and adding members https://youtu.be/8PqmIDGc4m0

Watch this video for adding creating group, add content and assignment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6L-nZGIUTE

References:

Okmawati, M. (2020). Journal of English Language Teaching, 9(2)

Sudarsana, K.  (et al.,  2019). Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1175 (2019) 012165 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1175/1/012165

Salam, U. (2020), Jurnal Pendidikan Indonosia:  The Students’ Use of Google Classroom in Learning English,9 (4), DOI: 10.23887/jpi-undiksha.v9i4.27163

Iftakhar, S. (2016). Google classroom: what works and how. Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 3(1), 12-18.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Classroom#:~:text=Google%20Classroom%20is%20a%20free,files%20between%20teachers%20and%20students.

Click the Link to enter the Google Classroom: https://classroom.google.com/w/MzgwMzEwNTY2MjA4/t/all