One of the things we might lose when moving to digital tools is communicating with our students. Just like we can leave notes on physical assignments, we can also do this with our digital assignments in Google Classroom.

There are three basic kinds of comments you can leave students in Classroom.

Class Comments: These are comments that you add to your class stream on the “outside” of an assignment or announcement. This type of comment is visible to the entire class, and can be used to answer questions that anyone might have. read more

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Coming soon to a computer near you is the new Google Calendar. For those of you who use Google Calendar on a mobile device this is going to be nothing new.

Here is a screenshot of the new calendar.

New GCal view

The first thing you will notice is the add button in the bottom right. It looks like the add menu in google classroom and lets you add events in a nice expanded dialog.

Adding an event

What I really like about the new add event screen is that it gives you a nice overview of the entire event. Notice also that you can use rich text in the descriptions of events. This would include hyperlinks and bold and italicized text. read more

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Well, you may not rule the world but you are in absolute control of the content in your Google account. You can copy the content in your account to use elsewhere or use the archive tool as a simple backup. This works great if you want to backup your YouTube videos or a specific folder in g Drive.

To accomplish this, follow the below instructions:

Visit https://myaccount.google.com/

From the Personal Info & Privacy area, click on CONTROL YOUR CONTENT

Personal info and privacy screen

Click on CREATE ARCHIVE

Create archive screen

The next screen allows you to select what data you want to include. By default, all options are selected. If you want to archive one specific folder in gDrive and/or YouTube files, it is easiest to click on the SELECT NONE button. read more

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One of the most powerful elements of Google Classroom is the private comments feature, which works with assignments only.

Comments become conversations with students, allowing for more back and forth discussion than can happen with verbal feedback. Every student can have a voice and communicate their ideas or struggles with a task.

To use private comments, open an assignment in Classroom, and there you will find a space for private comments. Any comments left here will be seen only by you and the individual student. read more

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