Google Classroom vs Office 365 Teacher Dashboard

[CamelMan]

We are an Office 365 school but I've been toying with the idea of Google Classroom to help staff get resources to students etc (we dropped the VLE approach a few years ago due to lack of use).

 

I believe you can sign up to Google Classroom with non Gmail accounts (as I would want to keep the accounts the same) however is the passwords sync from AD -> Office365 -> Google a viable solution (or Ad -> both).

 

I've also come across the Teacher Dashboard plugin for O365 - has anyone implemented it successful and has anyone been able to compare it to Google Classroom (pros' cons etc both seem to do similar things).

 

Any feedback appreciated!

[CyberNerd]

I believe you can sign up to Google Classroom with non Gmail accounts (as I would want to keep the accounts the same) however is the passwords sync from AD -> Office365 -> Google a viable solution (or Ad -> both).

 

Do AD -> both.

You'll need to mess with email routing to send it all to 365 if you want to keep running 365 as an option.

[LinkZ]

As an alternative to Teacher Dashboard, Onenote Class Notebook (included with Office365) may be something worth looking at. I've started testing it today after seeing it at BETT and it seems quite interesting.

[edmokeski]

We do 365 for mail, and GAfE for Drive and Classroom. We've got a bit of a mixed economy for productivity suite, basically with Office on the desktop and GAfE on the tablets. Could probably more successfully implement Office on tablets now (due to updates/changes in the last year or so), but it's just not easy enough if you're not using OneDrive.

We evaluated Teacher Dashboard vs Classroom vs VLE (mostly Firefly, but also Frog, which is our incumbent-if-cobwebby VLE) and concluded that Classroom was a real winner for ease of use, flexibility, spontaneity, etc. Dashboard and the VLEs were too focused on very structured assignment setting, collecting, and marking, where Classroom allowed for some more ad hoc uses. It also didn't have loads of features we'd never use, like VLEs do. We figured without it being seriously dead easy, it would get as cobwebby as the VLE did, so Google won out. We sync AD -> both for passwords, as well as MIS->GAfE (although I'm not sure that's turned out as valuable as it would if we used GMail).

If you do go Classroom, I seriously recommend looking into RosterSync to pre-configure classes for you, and GAM to make administrative changes, as Google expects teachers to do all the managing so don't really provide any useful admin tools other than an API. Having their classes pre-loaded and ready to accept really lowers the barriers to uptake for teachers who otherwise might not give it a whirl.

[psydii]

You can add Google Apps as an application via Azure AD.

[CamelMan]

We do 365 for mail, and GAfE for Drive and Classroom.

 

Thanks for that - out of interest is there a reason you use Google Drive rather than Onedrive - they looked pretty much the same when we looked at them?

[edmokeski]

Classroom. The tight Drive/Classroom integration was a real trump card, as we'd been leaning towards OneDrive before we decided to go with Classroom. For us it's all tied up w/ a 1:1 iPad roll-out, so we were looking for a tablet workflow solution with a focus on using the machines for teaching and learning more than admin tasks (which would have favoured OneDrive+Office).