Google classrooms and SIMs integration

[Nearthemark]

Afternoon,

 

This query is regarding teachers assigned to google classrooms.

 

Does anyone know of a way of associating "extra" staff with teaching groups in SIMs, so that when SIMs synchronises with G-suite the correct teachers stay with the groups (rather than adding them manually in google and this being overwritten)?

 

Thanks,

 

 

Mark

[RLR]

I haven't figured out a way to get a SIMS report in the correct format to give me multiple teachers per classroom. I even put a ticket in with our SIMS support provider and they say it's not possible. I believe Salamander can do this but not sure how! We have our classes created at the beginning of the year and then turn the sync off. If any changes need to be made then teachers do it or we use gam.

[rogerdnixon]

Depends on how you sync them. Most schools in our Trust use Wonde and at the moemnt there is not an option to add ah-hoc people as staff to classes without them being kicked out by the sync. So I have a GAM script that runs daily to add these ad-hoc people back in - so they do get kicked out - but quickly added back in.

 

At the school I'm based at, we use our own GAM scripts and only sync students to classes and not staff. Staff we add at the start of the year and then ad-hoc change we make with GAM during the year.

[Chaniel]

We use Salamander to sync and while this syncs the primary teacher and any shared teachers, we have it set so it's "add only" and doesn't remove anyone.

 

If a teacher changes class, they manually remove the class.

If we add someone manually (e.g. HoD, TA's etc.), the sync doesn't remove them.

[dhicks]

Does anyone know of a way of associating "extra" staff with teaching groups in SIMs, so that when SIMs synchronises with G-suite the correct teachers stay with the groups (rather than adding them manually in google and this being overwritten)?

 

GAM has the option to sync from a CSV file (removing any existing members not listed in the CSV) or manually add individual users. I have a script pick up a list of additional users from a Google Sheets document which then uses GAM to add or sync users as wanted. Similar to as mentioned above, you could have something similar run every night after the main SIMS-to-Google sync to add additional users back in.

[Nearthemark]

Thanks everyone, really helpful info 👍

[fiza]

We use Salamander and they have an option to add extra users via CSV file. We can add additional users to groups and to Google classrooms.

[coolhands]

I have a problem with google classrooms - (I seem to have a problem with every 3rd party provider) - with rotation subjects. Can anyone help? Some subjects DT etc rotate. So we use the rotation wizard in sims all works perfectly. The students move to the next class.

 

Now apparently google classrooms removes the old students, sticks the new ones in, and thus any markbook or submissions etc for the original students are gone? Sounds a bit crap. Salamander have suggested changing the classnames of the new rotated classes in sims. We have done so, but although these have been transferred to google classrooms with the correct new students, it has still added those new students to the old originally-named classes in google classrooms too! IMO I shouldn't have to rename classes in sims because of some 3rd party anyway!

 

It's so bl**dy annoying dealing with this nonsense day in and day out

 

So main question: how do you deal with rotation classes?

[BrightH]

Depends on how you sync them. Most schools in our Trust use Wonde and at the moemnt there is not an option to add ah-hoc people as staff to classes without them being kicked out by the sync. So I have a GAM script that runs daily to add these ad-hoc people back in - so they do get kicked out - but quickly added back in.

 

At the school I'm based at, we use our own GAM scripts and only sync students to classes and not staff. Staff we add at the start of the year and then ad-hoc change we make with GAM during the year.

 

If you add the staff member as a "Supervisor" in SIMS, Wonde will pull them through into the Google Classroom.

 

This will give them mark book permissions within SIMS for the class.

 

 

I was just about to start writing a similar script until I tested supervisor role.