G Suite

In reading about G Suite for Education, I am realizing that the Google Chromebooks may be the most common in-class technology resource nationally. I have heard classmates say they have had Chromebooks in some of the classes they taught, but I have never used Chromebooks or Google Classroom previously.  I have had a free Edmodo account for the last decade, without ever having utilized it for teaching unfortunately: https://www.edmodo.com/.  At the community colleges I taught at, we always had access to Blackboard. Hearing how expensive Blackboard can be, although relatively inexpensive, I am surprised Google Classroom or Edmodo are not more commonly used at the college level in place of Blackboard. There must be setbacks or limitations to the free resources that make Blackboard worth it still.  I think Edmodo gets teachers using it and then may require fees for advanced features, though, again, I have not used the website enough to know for sure.

I went to access Google Classroom, and I had to register for a G Suite Education account.  I went to register, and I was asked extensive questions about my educational institution, which I would complete; however, I do not have an actual classroom at this time. I would like to explore further, but I am hesitant to create a false or practice account that may make it more challenging to create an account when I do have a school to register under. Perhaps this may be seen as a set-back to the Google Classroom. I would love to click around and play with it without an account.

I do have tons of educational materials in my Google account from past years of teaching including  assignments, sample student papers, and lectures/presentations. I'm sure it would be made very easy by G Suite Education to incorporate my existing Google Docs into a Google Classroom. This would be a huge benefit to bring the teacher's work from his/her computer or home right into the classroom and onto the students' computers.

As discussed in our initial discussion boards around a tool we might choose to bring into the classroom, bringing Chromebooks and Google Classroom into our actual classrooms makes tools to assist students with exceptions more accessible.  As the History teacher from Booker T. Washington H.S. explains, technology creates unique opportunities for student collaboration, to make higher-level thinking activities and resources available to students, and most interestingly, to capture the complete content of the classroom in the cloud, making it always existing and accessible to student in and outside of class. Of course, this teacher acknowledges the setback for students who do not have access to connectivity.

When technology is provided to students by the school, as the teacher from NC discusses, there are going to be setbacks in terms of time to adapt for students and teachers, issues with tech glitches, or damaging expensive educational materials (like kids do). There would also be other common technology issues such as connectivity, lost documents (unsaved), and the never-ending cycle of keeping our technology charged.

My concluding thought is that the technology would need to be provided by the school to keep students (at school) on an even playing field, and the challenges and set-backs associated with this public service would simply need to be overcome with use and practice and adjustments.