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Do More with Google Classroom: Teach Better. Save Time. Make a Difference.
How can Google Classroom help me teach better? Be more efficient? Make a difference?
YouTube tutorials, support pages, and how-to guides about Google Classroom’s features are everywhere. But information on the features doesn’t automatically translate to great teaching.
Do More with Google Classroom is the guide book teachers have always needed about this digital tool that millions around the world are using. Inside, you will learn how to . . .
Set up and organize Google Classroom for success. Create great assignments with FREE templates and tools. Assess to truly know what students know. Save time for what matters most.
Use these strategies whether you’re teaching face to face, in a hybrid environment, or are remote teaching or online teaching. You’ll learn innovative ways to create assignments with Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawings. You’ll discover the effective ways to teach virtually through Google Classroom and Google Meet, Zoom, Skype, and other video conferencing platforms.
The book includes detailed infographics, links to articles and videos, downloadable resources, and more. Plus, it includes a companion website with loads of ideas to get you started right away.
It’s written by a real educator! Matt Miller taught in public schools for more than 10 years. In his career, he planned nearly 12,000 class lessons. He taught more than half a million instructional minutes. And he graded work for nearly 2,000 days of class. He’s a Google Certified Innovator, and his blog, “Ditch That Textbook”, and five books have equipped and inspired tens of thousands of educators in more than 100 countries.
YouTube tutorials, support pages, and how-to guides about Google Classroom’s features are everywhere. But information on the features doesn’t automatically translate to great teaching.
Do More with Google Classroom is the guide book teachers have always needed about this digital tool that millions around the world are using. Inside, you will learn how to . . .
Set up and organize Google Classroom for success. Create great assignments with FREE templates and tools. Assess to truly know what students know. Save time for what matters most.
Use these strategies whether you’re teaching face to face, in a hybrid environment, or are remote teaching or online teaching. You’ll learn innovative ways to create assignments with Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawings. You’ll discover the effective ways to teach virtually through Google Classroom and Google Meet, Zoom, Skype, and other video conferencing platforms.
The book includes detailed infographics, links to articles and videos, downloadable resources, and more. Plus, it includes a companion website with loads of ideas to get you started right away.
It’s written by a real educator! Matt Miller taught in public schools for more than 10 years. In his career, he planned nearly 12,000 class lessons. He taught more than half a million instructional minutes. And he graded work for nearly 2,000 days of class. He’s a Google Certified Innovator, and his blog, “Ditch That Textbook”, and five books have equipped and inspired tens of thousands of educators in more than 100 countries.
136 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 6, 2020
26 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
About the author
Matt Miller
6 books3 followersMatt Miller is the author of four books. He has spent more than a decade teaching technology-infused lessons in public schools. As an author, blogger and education speaker, he encourages teachers to free their teaching and revolutionize their classrooms with mindset, techniques and curriculum to serve today's learners. With thousands of subscribers and visitors from more than 100 countries, Matt's blog, DitchThatTextbook.com, is a well-respected source of ideas and insights about educational technology and creative teaching.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 22, 2022
Matt Miller adds new insights and shares information that goes beyond what Google Classroom can do. He offers great advice on how to set up your classroom and create assignments with Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawings. I love how he includes infographics, step-by-step instructions, and websites to help you start your classroom and features of Google Classroom. This book is user-friendly and easy to follow with instructions. Teachers can grow and help their students go beyond the basics by doing more with Google Classroom. I highly recommend this book and think all educators can benefit from it.
January 31, 2021
This is the book I wish I had when I first started with Google Classroom as a high school teacher... and the book that makes me want to go back to teaching so I can apply those ideas! I will definitely share the tips I learned from this book with the teachers I now coach! I love how Matt Miller explains things and the strong imagery that makes things clear! Based on pedagogy and not just the technical aspect , the tips given by Matt transform a simple tool into great learning for students!
December 18, 2021
For this assignment, I chose to read Do More with Google Classroom: Teach better. Save time. Make a difference. by Matt Miller. A few years ago, my principal recommended Tech Like a Pirate, another book by Matt Miller, and I actually read the entire book in one sitting. I was inspired by that book to try more technology in my classroom and I have been wanting to read another one of his books ever since. I decided on this particular book by Miller since it was recently published and it was advertised as a book that helps teachers use Google Classroom more effectively (NOT a “how to” book). I have been using Google Classroom for the last few years, so it felt like a good way for me to get both a refresh and a source of new ideas.
To begin with, chapter one is about the fact that Google Classroom (hereafter referred to as GC) is simply a tool for teachers to use. Miller goes into a discussion of the stress of the pandemic (for teachers, students and parents), the onslaught of bad reviews of GC in the app store during quarantine, and he asserts that the app itself is not necessary the reason for these bad reviews, but that we as teachers may need to take a close look at how we are using it with our students. According to the author, “when you move from ‘how Google Classroom works’ to ‘how to teach effectively with Google Classroom,’ you’re making the most of teaching and learning with Classroom” (2020, p. 10). Since it is just one tool in our arsenal of teaching tools, Miller is challenging us to try to use this tool in a more effective way.
Next, chapters two and three have you imagining your ideal classroom and staying organized with it. Miller makes a great cultural comparison here with Marie Kondo’s book about tidying up and envisioning your best life to tidying up GC and envisioning your ideal GC lifestyle - I mean, who here doesn’t know who Marie Kondo is? And I have to admit that I liked the idea that I could tidy up and streamline my GC. The remainder of these two chapters had some great ideas for this - break up classes methodically, name classes carefully, and organize topics and subtopics on the classwork page. Miller also states that “the class banner in Google Classroom is prime real estate” (2020, p.17). Before I read this chapter, I thought that the banner was something I created when I first set up my classroom and that’s it! I didn’t even think about adding a class slogan to it or changing it to make announcements or give reminders about deadlines.
Creating and enhancing assignments are the main ideas of chapters four and five. The metaphor here compares GC to an airport. Instead of physical destinations, students are being transported to different online resources, like Flipgrid, Screencastify, and Youtube (and many more!). The message that really stuck with me is that reverse planning is still applicable here and that I need to make sure my students are engaged. “A common misconception is that you can just port any lesson you’ve taught in class over to Google Classroom” (Miller, 2020, 35). In other words, I need to really evaluate any lessons, old or new, that I assign in GC - are the goals still being met when I put it into GC. Some of my favorite ideas were to number my assignments, to categorize with emojis, and to make sure my instructions are easy to follow and detailed.
Chapter six is about giving feedback. Miller references a quote from Grant Higgins here that was a huge reminder for me to give better feedback - “research shows that less teaching plus more feedback is the key to achieving greater learning” (2020, p. 55). There are so many ways to give feedback in GC. The one that I mainly use is in the private comments section inside an assignment. I will grade an assignment and let students know how they did. If they need to make improvements, I send students a reminder of what they need to change and I then encourage them to resubmit it. Some of the other ways to give students feedback are using announcements that appear in the stream, emailing individuals or groups of students, writing comments directly into the Google Doc, sheet, or slide.
Although feedback is the key to achieving, grading is the way teachers communicate this achievement. Chapter seven is about making grading easier for teachers. GC has a return feature so that students know that their assignment has been looked at and graded. Something that I didn’t know after using GC for many years, was that when an assignment is turned in, the teacher is given ownership rights until it is returned, meaning students will not be able to edit or see comments until the teacher returns it back to them (which makes total sense when I think about it - I don’t want students to be editing while I am in mid-grade!). Google also makes it very easy to use and grade with rubrics. Teachers can upload a rubric and click on the specific parts of the rubric and GC will automatically calculate the score.
Finally, GC can help teachers create better assessments as discussed in chapter 8. I appreciated that Miller went over the pros and cons of using auto-graded quizzes. Auto-grades quizzes get a bad rap, but according to Miller, “They can give students lightning-quick feedback, which is a best practice for making feedback effective” (2020, p. 77). I like that he recognized that there are times when auto-graded quizzes are appropriate and sometimes they are not. Miller also gave many ideas for other ways of assessing students’ knowledge, such as creating projects using infographics, comic strips, stop motion-animation, social media templates. My favorite idea in this chapter is to add an “everything I know about this topic but wasn’t asked” question. I love that this is a way to empower students and set them up for success!
Chapters nine and ten finish up this book with a look at some extension activities and the future of GC. Some of the extension activities that sounded interesting were digital escape rooms and to create a class for extracurricular activities within GC. Miller ended the final chapter with a very positive and encouraging vibe and I finished the book with a feeling that I could easily tweak my current use of GC in order to create a huge impact on my students' learning.
To begin with, chapter one is about the fact that Google Classroom (hereafter referred to as GC) is simply a tool for teachers to use. Miller goes into a discussion of the stress of the pandemic (for teachers, students and parents), the onslaught of bad reviews of GC in the app store during quarantine, and he asserts that the app itself is not necessary the reason for these bad reviews, but that we as teachers may need to take a close look at how we are using it with our students. According to the author, “when you move from ‘how Google Classroom works’ to ‘how to teach effectively with Google Classroom,’ you’re making the most of teaching and learning with Classroom” (2020, p. 10). Since it is just one tool in our arsenal of teaching tools, Miller is challenging us to try to use this tool in a more effective way.
Next, chapters two and three have you imagining your ideal classroom and staying organized with it. Miller makes a great cultural comparison here with Marie Kondo’s book about tidying up and envisioning your best life to tidying up GC and envisioning your ideal GC lifestyle - I mean, who here doesn’t know who Marie Kondo is? And I have to admit that I liked the idea that I could tidy up and streamline my GC. The remainder of these two chapters had some great ideas for this - break up classes methodically, name classes carefully, and organize topics and subtopics on the classwork page. Miller also states that “the class banner in Google Classroom is prime real estate” (2020, p.17). Before I read this chapter, I thought that the banner was something I created when I first set up my classroom and that’s it! I didn’t even think about adding a class slogan to it or changing it to make announcements or give reminders about deadlines.
Creating and enhancing assignments are the main ideas of chapters four and five. The metaphor here compares GC to an airport. Instead of physical destinations, students are being transported to different online resources, like Flipgrid, Screencastify, and Youtube (and many more!). The message that really stuck with me is that reverse planning is still applicable here and that I need to make sure my students are engaged. “A common misconception is that you can just port any lesson you’ve taught in class over to Google Classroom” (Miller, 2020, 35). In other words, I need to really evaluate any lessons, old or new, that I assign in GC - are the goals still being met when I put it into GC. Some of my favorite ideas were to number my assignments, to categorize with emojis, and to make sure my instructions are easy to follow and detailed.
Chapter six is about giving feedback. Miller references a quote from Grant Higgins here that was a huge reminder for me to give better feedback - “research shows that less teaching plus more feedback is the key to achieving greater learning” (2020, p. 55). There are so many ways to give feedback in GC. The one that I mainly use is in the private comments section inside an assignment. I will grade an assignment and let students know how they did. If they need to make improvements, I send students a reminder of what they need to change and I then encourage them to resubmit it. Some of the other ways to give students feedback are using announcements that appear in the stream, emailing individuals or groups of students, writing comments directly into the Google Doc, sheet, or slide.
Although feedback is the key to achieving, grading is the way teachers communicate this achievement. Chapter seven is about making grading easier for teachers. GC has a return feature so that students know that their assignment has been looked at and graded. Something that I didn’t know after using GC for many years, was that when an assignment is turned in, the teacher is given ownership rights until it is returned, meaning students will not be able to edit or see comments until the teacher returns it back to them (which makes total sense when I think about it - I don’t want students to be editing while I am in mid-grade!). Google also makes it very easy to use and grade with rubrics. Teachers can upload a rubric and click on the specific parts of the rubric and GC will automatically calculate the score.
Finally, GC can help teachers create better assessments as discussed in chapter 8. I appreciated that Miller went over the pros and cons of using auto-graded quizzes. Auto-grades quizzes get a bad rap, but according to Miller, “They can give students lightning-quick feedback, which is a best practice for making feedback effective” (2020, p. 77). I like that he recognized that there are times when auto-graded quizzes are appropriate and sometimes they are not. Miller also gave many ideas for other ways of assessing students’ knowledge, such as creating projects using infographics, comic strips, stop motion-animation, social media templates. My favorite idea in this chapter is to add an “everything I know about this topic but wasn’t asked” question. I love that this is a way to empower students and set them up for success!
Chapters nine and ten finish up this book with a look at some extension activities and the future of GC. Some of the extension activities that sounded interesting were digital escape rooms and to create a class for extracurricular activities within GC. Miller ended the final chapter with a very positive and encouraging vibe and I finished the book with a feeling that I could easily tweak my current use of GC in order to create a huge impact on my students' learning.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 31, 2021
I am well-versed in Google Classroom, but this book taught me a few things I didn't know. Very readable with relatable metaphors (Google Classroom as an airport, not a destination). I would be most useful to those who have Google Classroom experience but are looking to improve the student experience. Very good for discussions about best practices in the virtual environment/Google Classroom.
December 13, 2020
Google Classroom and More
This is the book on Google Classroom that I’ve been waiting for. How do you use Google Classroom effectively? This book gives some great but simple ideas on how to get the most bang for your buck. The airport analogy made it so much clearer.
This is the book on Google Classroom that I’ve been waiting for. How do you use Google Classroom effectively? This book gives some great but simple ideas on how to get the most bang for your buck. The airport analogy made it so much clearer.
December 21, 2020
Good basic book. If I were running a PD for folks who are relatively new to Google Classroom, this would be an excellent addition. However, I didn't find that it added that much to what I already know about GC.
January 17, 2021
My goal was to learn more about Google classroom and I did so success
September 30, 2021
This is a tremendous book which helps you understand how to maintain your Google classroom in this digital age.
December 28, 2020
If you need a basic book about using Google Classroom, this will help, but if you are looking for something higher level, this won’t help you much.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews