Google Classroom email summaries for guardians

[paulkerton]

By default, depending on what type of school you are, Google either enables Classroom summaries (junior schools) or doesn't (senior schools).

 

It's K-12 that are enabled by default, and HE that aren't. So UK high schools should have them enabled by default (unless they've changed something I'm not aware of)

[dhicks]

So UK high schools should have them enabled by default (unless they've changed something I'm not aware of)

 

Hmm - a very good point. However: our Classrooms don't seem to have Guardian updates enabled by default - I can see a report generated nightly from GAM with the "guardiansEnabled" value mostly set to "FALSE". As you point out, accoding to Google's documentation, for a "Primary/Secondary Education" customer that value should be "TRUE". This might be one to pass onto Google Support - it doesn't seem to match up what the documentation says should be happening.

[SpaceInvader83]

For us (We use Salamander) we had to make sure Guardian access was turned on in Admin - this had to be done prior to the initial Salamander sync, further to this staff then need to enable guardian summaries but they can do this in bulk (This sets the value to True) https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6388126?hl=en&ref_topic=7062675

[jthompson]

Hmm - a very good point. However: our Classrooms don't seem to have Guardian updates enabled by default - I can see a report generated nightly from GAM with the "guardiansEnabled" value mostly set to "FALSE". As you point out, accoding to Google's documentation, for a "Primary/Secondary Education" customer that value should be "TRUE". This might be one to pass onto Google Support - it doesn't seem to match up what the documentation says should be happening.

 

Seeing that here, too, although if an admin user creates a class, it's enabled. Our domain is set to only allow admins to add guardians, so I don't know whether changing that to allow teachers to create guardians would have the summaries enabled by default when they create a class.

 

---- Ignore that. I think that's all down to whether a particular account has previously used that "Add all the classes that you teach to guardian email summaries" option.

Edited October 13, 2020 by jthompson

[jthompson]

For us (We use Salamander) we had to make sure Guardian access was turned on in Admin - this had to be done prior to the initial Salamander sync, further to this staff then need to enable guardian summaries but they can do this in bulk (This sets the value to True) https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6388126?hl=en&ref_topic=7062675

 

So is Salamander able to set that guardian option to true when provisioning a new class for you, when the option is off by default if a teacher creates a course manually?

 

I've noticed that guardiansEnabled is a read-only attribute via the Google Classroom API. I'm not able to use GAM to control it, so would be interested if Salamander is able to do it.

[SpaceInvader83]

So is Salamander able to set that guardian option to true when provisioning a new class for you, when the option is off by default if a teacher creates a course manually?

 

I've noticed that guardiansEnabled is a read-only attribute via the Google Classroom API. I'm not able to use GAM to control it, so would be interested if Salamander is able to do it.

 

I don't think they can because of the read-only aspect of the attribute via the API - The Guardian process doesn't enable guardian summaries on individual classrooms, unfortunately, we're unable to set this via the API.

[IGB]

This thread has been an interesting read.

We use Salamander here to provision 4 schools into Google Classrooms etc.

Salamander created the Guardian Invitations for 1 of the schools and we had a lot of parents from different domains claiming that they had not received it.

I then used GAM to clear any current invitations then re-send an invitation which seems to have worked for most users.

I did read somewhere that it could possibly be the receiving mail server marking as spam/phishing etc when sending in bulk.

For the second school, I did all the invitations manually using GAM and only sent 50 invitations at a time, this resulted in much fewer reports of users not receiving their invitations.

 

The second issue we had was parents stating that they were not getting any updates, however I needed to point out 2 things:

1) If there is no teacher activity on a particular classroom, then there is nothing to update.

2) Guardian Summaries must be turned on in each Classroom and this must be done by the teacher as the API gives no access to change it.

 

Although it was frustrating whilst it was happening, it's good to see that we're not the only ones going through these issues.

[jthompson]

We're looking at sending out all our invitations tomorrow, so it's helpful to see that sending in smaller batches might improve delivery.

 

In terms of teachers turning it on for all of their classes, the first time they do this, they'll get an option (ticked by default) to also turn it on for all of their other classes as well. That then seems to default the guardians option to on for any classes they create in future, too (not using Salamander here yet).

 

I'm anticipating still getting lots of queries from guardians about not getting a real-time view of Classroom, especially those with a weekly subscription. It's a shame the information for guardians with a Google account can't be presented to them live at classroom.google.com, so that they can see what little Johnny has been set today, without having to wait for the email to drop.

[paulkerton]

I'm anticipating still getting lots of queries from guardians about not getting a real-time view of Classroom, especially those with a weekly subscription. It's a shame the information for guardians with a Google account can't be presented to them live at classroom.google.com, so that they can see what little Johnny has been set today, without having to wait for the email to drop.

I'm guessing you have a lot of helicopter parents then? I couldn't think of anything worse as a teacher, than the digital equivalent of a parent standing over a person's teaching and protecting little Johnny from any potential deserved constructive criticism.

I think the balance of a daily or weekly email option is about right. If Johnny wants to show his work to his parents, Johnny can show it to them. Otherwise, I think you're just inviting overly protective and difficult parents to micro-manage their child.

[jthompson]

I was thinking more about those cases where the child is something of a habitual refuser but the parent is trying to support the school's efforts. It's helpful in those cases for the parent to 'know' that they have up to date info at any given point, and not be relying on their child to get it. That's what they've been used to with EduLink until now (we're switching homework from EduLink to Classroom now to avoid duplication). I guess in those cases, the most recent guardian email is still going to have work that the child is yet to have completed anyway.

[paulkerton]

I was thinking more about those cases where the child is something of a habitual refuser but the parent is trying to support the school's efforts. It's helpful in those cases for the parent to 'know' that they have up to date info at any given point, and not be relying on their child to get it. That's what they've been used to with EduLink until now (we're switching homework from EduLink to Classroom now to avoid duplication). I guess in those cases, the most recent guardian email is still going to have work that the child is yet to have completed anyway.

Teachers can always send an email with that information in from Classroom, so that scenario is covered generally, but I get where you are coming from there.