Welcome Back to School Tip: Add Yourself As A Student in Your Google Classrooms

 

Welcome back to school everyone. As we get to know the fresh faces in our classrooms, we will do a bunch of modeling this time of year to get them used to our expectations and routines. One of those expectations or routines kids will need in the beginning of the year is how to navigate your Google Classroom. You'll want to refresh them on where to look for announcements (Stream), how to navigate and turn in certain assignment types (Classwork), and much more. 

From the teacher's end, it looks different than that of the student. When you open an assignment as a teacher, you cannot show how to turn it in or demonstrate what students must do to complete it. My advice is to add yourself, a personal Gmail account or a separate teacher demo account within your district's domain, as a student. This way you can login to Classroom with that account and demonstrate exactly what you want students to do in Classroom. This is especially helpful for students new to the platform, English learners and SPED students. 

If your district doesn't allow accounts outside of the domain to be added, talk to whoever is in charge of the Google Admin Console to create a teacher demo account for you. If it is allowed, add a personal Gmail account as a student. Start by going to the People tab in Classroom. Click the Add students button.

Start typing your personal Gmail address or teacher demo account from within your domain. When it appears in Search Results, click it and then click Invite.

Go to Google Classroom in your personal Gmail account or teacher demo account and you'll see invitations to join the Classrooms.

When you are in as a student, you can do all the same things students can do. You can demonstrate how to do certain assignments and turn them in. 

This is also useful for students who are absent or are working from home because you can screencast and record these demonstrations for them. In addition, anytime you unveil a new assignment or activity in which kids are not familiar, being able to demonstrate the processes and your expectations is very valuable.

If you have any questions and would like a follow up, contact me via Gmail or Chat at ajuarez@techcoachjuarez.com. My book, The Complete EdTech Coach: An Organic Approach to Digital Learning, co-authored with my wife Katherine Goyette is now available on Amazon. Click here to purchase. It is published by Dave Burgess Publishing. Be sure to follow the hashtag #OrganicEdTech and #CVTechTalk for updates.