PPS Google Classrooms for All PPS Teachers

Thank you everyone for your patience! We know that getting Google Classroom up and running is a big deal for many of you. Hopefully the wait has been worth it...

Google Classrooms are now being AUTOMATICALLY created based on the courses in Skyward. If you are the teacher for a course in Skyward, then you will have access as the teacher for that Google Classroom. As students are added to, or leave your class, they will automatically be added or removed from your Google Classroom as well. Here are a few other details...

• The sync with Skyward runs once a day. Therefore if a student is added to your class in Skyward on a Monday, they will show up in your Google Classroom on Tuesday morning.

• Teachers will have to Accept their classes before they can be used. To do this, go to classroom.google.com. Click the blue Accept button for your course.

• Google Classroom class names cannot be changed. This helps with continuity for teachers and students.
• Course names all follow the same naming convention. They are: [School Year Period/Yr-Q-S] Class Name (Teachers Names). YR-Q-S means YR for Year long class, Q for a quarter long class (ex: Q4), and S for a semester class (ex: S2). 
• Teachers cannot add other teachers. I know this is a bummer, however, if a teacher is a co-teacher in Skyward, then they will also be a co-teacher in Google Classroom.
• Teachers should not manage their student list in each of their classes. This is handled automatically by the nightly sync. Changes made by teachers will be overridden.
• Google Classrooms will not have any students in them until one of the assigned teachers "Accepts" the Classroom at https://classroom.google.com/. Then at 5 am the next day, all the students will appear.
• You do NOT need to accept all the classes. For example, if you are an elementary educator and only want one Google classroom for your class, then only accept one of the courses (ex: learner behaviors). You can leave the others "unaccepted". 
• Once you decline a course you will NOT have an opportunity to accept it again.
• You can create your own courses if you wish - for example, if you have an intervention class, or what to break up your classes in some other way. The courses you create, however, will not be auto-updated in any way. These are your responsibility to manage.

Hopefully that covers all the basics to get you going. For information about Google Classroom in general, check out the classroom help page.

To see what is new in classroom from this summer, including inviting parents to receive guardian summaries, check out these updates:

• Guardian summaries: Teachers and administrators can invite guardians to sign up for email summaries to keep up with their students. Guardians can choose how often to get a summary—daily or weekly—and can unsubscribe at any time. Summaries include a student’s missing or upcoming work as well as new announcements and questions posted by teachers in the class stream.
• Topics for stream organization: Teachers can organize the class stream by adding topics to posts. Teachers and students can filter the stream by topic.
• Teachers and students can preview materials attached to assignments or posts.

As always, please let Paul or I know if you need any assistance as you get rolling this school year. Feel free to set up appointments with us as well by going to calendly.com/ppstech.