Parents and Google Classroom Tip: Add as Guardians or Students

 

Maintaining a strong communication loop with parents is more important than ever with distance learning. Here are three ways to do so with Google Classroom. 

1. Add parents as Guardians

In Google Classroom People Tab, each student (enrolled using a GSuite for Education address) will have a button that says Invite Guardians. When you click it, you will enter that student's parent email address. This will send reports of that student's work and progress to the parent's email address weekly. 

2. Add parents as Students

If you have parents that are very hands-on and want to really get the student experience to better help their child, add the parent email address as a student. The same way, in the People Tab, you invite a student, you can invite the parent as a student to the Classroom. One thing to be aware of when doing this is that your school or district's domain must allow accounts outside the domain to join the Classroom. Talk to your school's tech coach or IT person for info on this. 

This video shows how add parents as Guardians or Students.

3. Give parents the student login

Your school's data system (ie. Illuminate) usually has reports listing your students' email addresses and passwords. You can pass this along to parents to have them login as the student for them to help. 

Adding parents as students and giving parents their child's login info do pose the potential hazard of cheating. I tend to assume the best of intentions, but it would be naive of me not at least consider this possibility. 

If you have any questions and would like a follow up, contact me via Gmail or Hangouts at ajuarez@techcoachjuarez.com. If you would like to unsubscribe from this blog, go to bit.ly/tcjinbox.