Google Snacks Volume 14 - Classroom Integration with Progressbook

Hey Everyone,

The pictures attached below are essentially a roadmap of how to sync your Google Classroom grades with Progressbook without having to type those pesky grades directly into Progressbook. One thing to keep in mind during this process is that Progressbook will only accept grades that have been returned to students. Any draft grades or ungraded assignment will not populate a value and therefore be entered as a blank. You of course can always re-sync the same grade after grading every assignment and those blank grades mentioned before will populate without effecting the previously entered grades. You may also sync as many different assignments as you wish as long as the assignments all are within the same course on Classroom.

First, we need to make sure all the grades you want to enter have been returned to students and assigned a grade...

Next, we will navigate over to the Progressbook homepage and click on "Google Classroom Sync" near the middle-bottom portion of the homepage.

After clicking "Google Classroom Sync," you will be asked to sign-in to your Google Account. Once that step is complete, you need to select the class you are syncing from both in the Google portion (lower dropdown) and the Progressbook portion (upper dropdown).

Next, on the lefthand side of the screen, select which type of assignment you are syncing. This will will allow assignments to be placed in the correct categories for weighting. After selecting the assignment type on the left, select which assignment/s you would like to sync for this course. Remember you can sync as many assignments as you wish as long as the assignments are within the same course on Classroom.

Finally, you will click the Blue "Next" Button in the upper-righthand to proceed to the syncing process.

The next step requires one of two different things:

1. If this is the first time syncing this grade, you may proceed simply by pressing the blue "Sync" button in the upper-righthand and you are all done! (Picture 1).
2. If you are syncing a grade you have already synced before, you will need to select whether or not you would like to overwrite previous grades entered or not, and then complete step on. (Picture 2)

Finally if everything has gone accordingly, you should see the below page confirming that grade has been synced. You may also select "Synch New" in the upper-lefthand corner to start again with a new assignment or class.

Please email or call if you have any questions. Thank you!

Google Snacks Volume 13 - Google Classroom Advanced

Today we will be covering some of the advanced features of Google Classroom, which were not covered by the previous session. This session includes, looking at the Classroom folder in Google Drive, integrating other Google apps into Classroom, and exploring other assignment options.

After you create your first class, the Classroom folder will be automatically added to your Google Drive. Each class you create will have its own subfolder as well.

These folders will be where copies of materials, quizzes, and other classroom files are stored.

Switching back over to Classroom, on the Classwork tab at the top of a class, let's take a quick look at Quiz Assignments and how they differ from regular Assignments.

Quiz Assignments auto generate a Blank Quiz, which is the only difference between this and a Normal Assignment. 

Quizzes can be added to normal assignments, so Blank Quizzes are not added to your Drive. Blank Quizzes will show up in the folder associated with that class as seen below. This can be avoided by creating the quiz first and attaching it to a normal assignment.

Next, we will take a look at the Question option under Create.

Questions have additional options for making a self contained question on the Stream portion of Classroom. You can ask both Short Answer or Multiple Choice.

If you choose Short Answer, you can choose to have the students respond to each other or not. You can also choose if you want students to be able to edit their own answers.

The last option under the Create menu is Material.

Materials are just that, assignment materials. Materials cannot be graded, circled in the image below is where the grading option would be shown.

How does this all work together? The Classroom Basics session was a solid foundation for everything. This session, Classroom Advanced, builds on the Basics and ties in additional apps. Google Forms Quizzes allows you to create tests/quizzes you can use year after year, change up the answers, and even import individual questions from one test to another. Quizzes can be auto graded and the grades applied to Classroom, then synced to Gradebook. Finally, Comments in Docs and Slides gives you another option for assignments that can be graded (or not).

In our next session, which will be our last Classroom session for now, we will cover grading with Classroom. Grading covers a bigger discussion topic than originally anticipated, which is why it will have its own session. This will include how to grade, additional options for grading, and integrating Classroom grades with Progressbook.

I hope this helped you get to know a Google feature you didn't already know before. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comments section.