Google Classroom:

        This weeks First post will focus on an article on educatorstechnology.com, the article is about educational technology and mobile learning, and articulates five important things teachers should be able to do using Google classroom. It is a short how to guide, but is concise and to the point in regards to how to set up a google classroom and fill it with materials to distribute and collect. to quickly summarize, the 5 important abilities are: creating new classes, create a resource page, create and modify assignments, grade and return assignments, and post announcements. this seems to be everything needed to run the basics of a classroom and serves as a good introduction/tutorial supplement to using Google Classroom.

Now for some opinions. I find that I really like that tools such as google classroom exist, as well as many of the other web 2.0 based resources for classroom management. However many of the schools I have worked with do have their own proprietary software or web services that teachers are encouraged or mandated to use. This can be problematic when some students teachers opt to use the school based sites and others use some other service, so that students with multiple teachers may have to visit many different resources to get their assignments and stay current in their classes. I know as a college student there are services like Blackboard or, for CSUSM cougar courses, but even I have had professors who do not use cougar courses so I have needed to check multiple sites for assignments and announcements.

services like Google classrooms do provide a solution 'if' the entire school agrees to adopt the service for all their classrooms; this can reduce costs of having to buy and maintain a proprietary system for classroom management, but does come with risks of not having as much control over content and security. Cloud based classroom management software has a whole other sector of clientele outside of public and private educational institutes, community sports leagues can use this to manage participation, and not just sports teams but any local business that functions in a classroom like structure, from gymnastics and martial arts, to dance studios, trade schools, and even private individuals offering their services as tutors can use Google classroom to increase their effectiveness and organize materials/students and distribute information. Below are links to the various resources discussed above.

5 Tasks Every Teacher Should be Able to do on Google Classroom

Google Classroom

BlackBoard

CougarCources