Transit Dashboard and Google Classroom Updates

Today's Tips involve the Transit Dashboard and Google Classroom

The Transit Dashboard is a weblink that contains documents sent out to all staff through email...all in one place.   Documents like the School Calendar, meeting schedules and tech tips.

To get the most use out of the TMS Dashboard, bookmark it in your browser or create a shortcut on your phone's home screen for quick access.

TMS Dashboard

If there are documents you think should be on the site, upload them to Google and share with Amy Girling and Larry Goble with a note about the TMS Dashboard.  




As you have started your year you may have noticed that Google Classroom has changed quite a bit.  If you haven't figured out the where to put stuff or why it is better here is a brief list and a presentation if you want more details.

Google Classroom updates:

• New Classwork  and Stream Tab: Use the Stream tab sparingly for announcements or class discussions...commenting back and forth.  Use the Classwork tab to post all assignments, materials and organize in topics

• Topics: In the classwork page you should 99% of the time use a topic.  These topics are like Unit headers and will keep all your assignments/questions/material for that unit together.  You can change the order of the topics and the order of the posts within each topic.  Anything you don't assign to a topic will live at the top and annoy you.

• No About Tab:  We previously used the about tab to post static information and get the class code and add teachers.

• Classcode and Co-teachers: In the Settings gear

• Materials posting option: Along with assignment and question you can also post a material.  Use this when you are handing out a view only doc that isn't connected to a grade or comment.  Those things like a syllabus that you used to post in the ABOUT tab can be posted as Materials in the Classwork tab without a topic and they will stay at the top of the stream for easy access.

• Grading Frame: When opening a students assignment for commenting/grading google classroom will default open it in a special Grading Frame.  In this frame you can see the student doc, comment, assign a grade and click an arrow to see the next students doc.  This is much more convenient than opening and closing multiple files and having different places to comment and assign the grade.

There are a few more subtle changes covered in the slides below but those are the major ones.  As always...those are my tips...but I have been wrong before.

Let me know if you need anything.