Google Workspace - Classroom - Visit a Class...?

[Koldov]

TL;DR - How do I (Super Admin) access a class without joining it or being a teacher etc.

 

I presuming I've got the privilege/role/rights/permissions, but I've seen a YouTube video which mentions needing a 'Plus' license (we are fundamental)...

 

Back story...

 

I've never touched Classroom and only dealt with the admin side of GW... for the Classroom side, computing curriculum resources and other bits like that the Headmaster decided on using a consultant.

 

To deal with all the pupils passwords the consultant decided to create spreadsheets... Initially I wasn't involved, so let them get on with it and you guessed it... now it has landed on my desk to deal with!

 

From what I can work out they have created a per year group spreadsheet with the pupils name and password so they can be printed out (!) or referred to when the children forget.

 

However, these appear to be in Classroom (I got CC'd in on) from an email exchange a while ago that mentioned the following:

 

"I have made a note of the changes on the spreadsheet which you can now view in the Year 6 - Computing Planning Resources. "

 

So, I do need a central way to 'manage' all children's passwords, but also let teachers and TAs have access and at the same time. I'm also happy to leave them in the 'Classroom' but also need to be able to change them and keep them up to date when children join/leave or need to change their passwords.

 

so, first things first, can I access Classroom?

[K-ITS]

Hi there, as far as I know, if you ask a teacher who is already in the class to add you they can and then you should be able to go in and access the sheet (the password sheet will be stored in the creator / teachers Google Drive in a Classroom folder) and then you should be able to edit it to change passwords once you have access, however it sounds like you just need access to the Year 6 Shared Drive so you can access the spreadsheet. With regards to Google Classroom, unless you set them up or are invited in you dont have access to them as it is a seperate entity in that respect to Google Workspace.... unless they have changed things recently....

[fiza]

Start using GAM https://github.com/taers232c/GAMADV-XTD3

Command Guide: https://sites.google.com/jis.edu.bn/gam-commands/home

 

You can then use GAM to add yourself into any Google Classroom and leave when you are finished needing to be in the classroom.

GAM allows you to do so much in Google workspace. We couldnt do without it.

[Garacesh]

Also possible through PSGSuite with Add-GSCourseParticipant if you're more comfortable with PowerShell

 

Edit: I haven't used GSuite for a few years but essentially, there's no 'read only' way to view a classroom, you have to be a teacher, which is a bit poor form for troubleshooting.

Surely your issue isn't a G Suite issue, though? Delegate reset password permissions on your root pupil OU to the staff security group (or maybe just ICT Teachers group or similar?) and then give them a password reset tool like Cjwdev's one?

Edited November 22, 2023 by Garacesh

[HarryMonkey]

There's also this as a quick cheat sheet ...

 

https://gamcheatsheet.com/GAM%20Cheat%20Sheet%20A3.pdf

 

And this contains some GAM command examples.

 

https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM/wiki

[jthompson]

Google Classroom's Visit a class feature requires a GWfE Plus license, iirc.

 

Without that, you're basically needing to be added as a teacher to any class you need to get inside of. As others have posted, that either needs to be done for you by an existing teacher of the class, or you can do it via the API using a third-party tool such as GAM. You can't manage individual classes from Google Admin.

 

However, your description of the password management spreadsheets suggests that all you really need is access to the sheet(s), which ought to be possible via the regular Google sharing mechanism, even if the sheet(s) remain stored within a Classroom class (that might need checking!). Give yourself suitable access, and give other staff read privileges as required. If the sheets are stored in a Shared Drive, all the better, since as an admin you'll be able to manage the membership of shared drives from within Google Admin.

 

If other, non-admin staff need to be able to reset students' Google passwords, you can delegate that by creating an admin role for the purpose and assigning that role as required. Users with that role would then have [limited] access to Google Admin to perform account password resets on the OUs that you have scoped their admin role to (e.g. just your student OUs).

[mavhc]

To deal with all the pupils passwords the consultant decided to create spreadsheets

 

They didn't just sync with AD? Scrap it and sync with AD already, one password, one email

[Koldov]

Phew! Lot's to unpack here...

 

But first, it gets weirder... unfortunately also makes sense at the same time...

 

I've looked at the shared drives in Google Workspace (Admin > Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Drive and Docs > Manage shared drives) and there isn't a 'Year 6 - Computing Planning Resources' shared drive... but from what I gather based on the above posts 'Classroom' drives won't show up there...?

 

I did get access to one of the Year Groups and can see the Drive/folders and it appears the consultant is the 'owner' of everything. Anyway, then the penny dropped, I believe this is actually a folder on the consultant's domain and shared by them! I remember having to allow the domain they use, so they could share the resources with the teachers...

 

What I don't seem to be able to see for definite (and I'm not sure I'll get my head around), is where this data exists (I guess I'm thinking in terms of old school terminology, but I'm trying to figure out where the data resides - not in terms of which 'cloud' data processing centre, but in what domain/tenant etc.), I just can't seem to see it, but that also appears to be the case for the whole of Classroom... As has been said there doesn't appear to be a 'central' way to manage Classroom, so I can imagine it's all a bit Wild West and I can see it getting out of hand very quickly. As usual none of our teachers have actually been trained in how to use it, so it's going to get messy...

 

I'm not quite ready for GAM/PSGSuite/GWfE Plus licensing as Google Workspace/Classroom is still a bit of a slow burner here and we haven't fully committed to it at all. We only really started using it again (after it had been dormant since lockdown) as the consultant had led the Headteacher into some fantasy land where it would transform T&L... but of course nobody has been trained to make that work (I think they are expecting it to just magically happen), so it's a half-hearted attempt like everything else here...

 

So, with that being said, as for syncing, our children aren't on AD and I'm not sure MIS syncing would be the best thing to do either as we had already set-up a couple of years ago in the first lockdown whilst I was working from home (and pressured to do it in a couple of days) so I went with uploading a .csv, unfortunately as children were added by other people there became discrepancies due to some using preferred names and others using legal names. I just can't face going through hundreds of duplicates or deleting everyone and everything and starting from scratch.

[Garacesh]

If your users aren't on-prem, you can create an administrative role in G Suite that you can assign people to, which gives them the ability to reset passwords. IIRC they'll have to use the Admin panel, but they'll only see the Users module, and you can limit whose passwords they can reset, so they can only do pupils.

 

Keeping a spreadsheet of passwords just rubs me all sorts of the wrong way.

[rogerdnixon]

So shared drives are nothing directly to do with Classroom. Imagine them as network drives in the Cloud the the organisation owns and you can add individuals, groups or even OUs to.

 

When a Class is created the teachers of that class and the pupils et a Classroom folder in their Drive and in that a folder for each course they are associated with. Typically as a teacher I'd hardly ever look in there as Classroom takes care of putting files in the right place and manages permissions for you. So I just use the Classroom interface for looking at students work and communicating with them and they submit their work via Classroom and it magically takes care of everything in the backend. I do have resources that live in a Shared drive that I use for assignments - so the templates if you like.

 

In terms of management I'd recommend auto provisioning all classrooms and syncing directly to your MIS. There are numerous ways of doing this - but we use Bromcom - so they have a tool that syncs classes, users, calendars and groups and makes it very easy. But Wonde has a good connector as well as another example. The Bromcom tool allows you to add and remove people on the fly, archives classes at the end of the year and so one. Once set pretty much zero touch across 15k students.

 

GAM is the commandline tool we use to do ad-hoc things - e.g. jump into a class and take a look.

 

Classroom visitors is great for the likes of a cover team who just need to jump into a class or senior leaders who want to do a work scrutiny - but does need Plus (well worth it).

 

Anyways - stick with it - Classroom is super powerful and I'd not be without it now as a teacher.

[jthompson]

I've looked at the shared drives in Google Workspace (Admin > Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Drive and Docs > Manage shared drives) and there isn't a 'Year 6 - Computing Planning Resources' shared drive... but from what I gather based on the above posts 'Classroom' drives won't show up there...?

 

I did get access to one of the Year Groups and can see the Drive/folders and it appears the consultant is the 'owner' of everything. Anyway, then the penny dropped, I believe this is actually a folder on the consultant's domain and shared by them! I remember having to allow the domain they use, so they could share the resources with the teachers...

 

What I don't seem to be able to see for definite (and I'm not sure I'll get my head around), is where this data exists (I guess I'm thinking in terms of old school terminology, but I'm trying to figure out where the data resides - not in terms of which 'cloud' data processing centre, but in what domain/tenant etc.), I just can't seem to see it, but that also appears to be the case for the whole of Classroom...

 

Classroom classes' files/folders aren't stored in Shared Drives, so you won't see them under Admin > Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Drive and Docs > Manage shared drives.

 

If you've found one of the files or folders that you're after, have a look at who the owner of it is. If it's a user on a different domain, then those files/folders belong to a different Google Workspace tenancy (or an external Google account, at any rate) and have just been shared with users in your tenancy. It would therefore out of your reach from an admin point of view. If the owner is an account in your Google domain, then the files/folders do belong to your tenancy.

 

If the file/folder is stored in a Shared Drive, then there will be no 'owner' user, since the shared drive itself will be the owner. In that case, the location of the file may be able to be ascertained by having it open and looking at the file location in the UI. It could be that it's a file stored in a shared drive that you're not a member of, which will obscure it's location.

 

The same may be true for Classroom classes, technically. They could belong to another tenancy, and your staff and pupils are joining classes outside of your domain. That seems less likely, though. Have a look at Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Classroom > Class settings to see whether your users area able to join classes outside the domain, and also whether any external domains are allowlisted.

 

 

As for something that you can do... if you've got access to a file, look at whether there is an owner listed in the sharing list of the file. If there's no owner, it's sitting in a shared drive. If you're a member of the shared drive in which it resides, the name of the shared drive will be visibile within the UI.

[Koldov]

If you contract in consultants, you get whatever the consultant tells the HT to do... this is the bypass the IT dept. manoeuvre. They will win the battle and get what they want (and I've kept a copy of the actual email I was accidentally CC'd in on which says exactly that)...

 

I've obviously made my feelings clear to the HT about a few things, but they aren't going to turn round and say "You know what? You're right, what a waste of money getting a consultant! I've been so blind to the fountain of technical knowledge standing right in front of me all the time! I'd forgotten what I actually pay you for and thought I knew better, it seems you really do know best"... Especially not over a primary school age child's GW password being on a spreadsheet. The teachers have 30 small children, most of whom can't remember their password from one lesson to the next, so they have a printed list for each of the resources the children need to log in to and it saves eating into lesson time. It's not a negotiable thing and I'm not going to be able to change that even if I say "OMG, passwords on a spreadsheet, but what about the H4x0RZ?!"

 

Anyway, I don't have a lot of say in GW at the moment and I won't have until the consultant moves on (but I'm not sure how long that will be as they seem to have their hooks in the HT with promises of delivering a 'paint by numbers' computing curriculum resource), so I'm just biding my time, making subtle changes and choosing my battles wisely...

 

 

So, I'll take that all on board for the future, but as for the point of the OP... it wasn't at all about changing passwords, it was just about me being able to access the spreadsheet to add/remove children, or update etc.

[mavhc]

Ask the consultant how you're supposed to use their amazing system

 

I assume someone's got teacher rights to the resource classroom, they add you, then you share the file

[Garacesh]

If you contract in consultants, you get whatever the consultant tells the HT to do...

Touché

 

So, I'll take that all on board for the future, but as for the point of the OP... it wasn't at all about changing passwords, it was just about me being able to access the spreadsheet to add/remove children, or update etc.

 

I think the only real play here is get the consultant to give up that document so it can be put in a Shared Drive/Team Drive (I forget which is the new name and which was the old name..) so you have control of the access, and can modify it as needed. That's kind all you can do, by the sounds of it.