Google Classroom / shared drive question.

[TwistedHelixis]

The Senco at a small primary school wants to use the few Chromebooks they have with some SEN pupils. What she wants is, if they write something in Gdocs she wants to be able to read it from her laptop and perhaps print it out.

 

The teachers / pupils do have Google Classroom setup, but this is used very minimally, for the odd bit of homework. The Senco also wants the teachers to be able to see what the pupils have created.

 

I got the feeling the Senco wouldn't want to us Google Classroom to assign any work, she just wants to tell the pupil to write something and then have access to that work.

 

So, do I assign the Senco to each for the Google Classrooms already setup? Create a new Senco classroom and assign the pupils / teachers to this? Just create new shared drives for each of the classes?

[jthompson]

Shared Drives for each class would expose pupils' work to one another, so probably don't do that.

 

Might another option be for the SENCO to guide each SEN pupil through creating a suitably named folder in their Google Drive (e.g. "Billy B's Work"), share that with SENCO and teachers as required, and drill the pupil to do all their work in that folder?

 

SENCO/teachers would then see work magically appearing in "Billy B's Work" in their "Shared with me" items.

[TwistedHelixis]

Might another option be for the SENCO to guide each SEN pupil through creating a suitably named folder in their Google Drive (e.g. "Billy B's Work"), share that with SENCO and teachers as required, and drill the pupil to do all their work in that folder?

Guess that depends how many pupil the Senco intends to work with.

 

If the senco doesn't want this as an option, and shared drives will expose the pupils work, which of my two Google Classroom options would be best? adding the senco to each of the classrooms already created or creating a new senco classroom?

 

Also, if we did go down the Classroom route, can a pupil open G docs and save that file into Google Classroom, or do they need an assignment set first?

[jthompson]

It perhaps depends on how much the existing teachers are already using Classroom, and whether the work that SENCO wants to see is predominantly being set by the SENCO in the first place. If it's work that is predominantly being set by the SENCO, then a dedicated SENCO Classroom class would perhaps be preferable, with the other teachers added to it as well to allow them to see the work. That also gives scope for those other teachers to set assignments just for SEN pupils, without having to bother with managing Classroom for the rest of their pupils if they don't want to be doing that.

 

I'm pretty sure that all the work would need to be off the back of assignments.

[TwistedHelixis]

Might another option be for the SENCO to guide each SEN pupil through creating a suitably named folder in their Google Drive (e.g. "Billy B's Work"), share that with SENCO and teachers as required, and drill the pupil to do all their work in that folder?

Alternatively, the Senco could create the folder in Google Drive and share that with the pupil / teacher. Then all the pupil would need to do is drag the shared folder into their my drive. This would also mean the Senco is the owner of the drive.

[jthompson]

That would also work, but I think you'd want to go a step further and transfer ownsership of the folder to the pupil, as well. That then avoids anyone losing work if/when the SENCO leaves the organisation and their account is suspended.

[PrimaryNetMan]

I would still go with Classroom. Create a class for the Senco, add the pupils. Senco just creates a simple assignment. Pupils can then just create a new doc from within the assignments and job done. Senco can see all their work from within the assignment.

[jthompson]

Agreed. Using a SENCO class also keeps usage in line with how the platform was intended to be used, and so Google end-user support articles, etc. will all be pertinent and useful. Any new staff coming into the arrangement down the line can then just be told "we're using Google Classroom".