Not only did teachers try to get to know and apply possible online workspaces like Microsoft Teams or Google Classroom at the same time, and students tried to meet the requirements of the sometimes digital, sometimes more like online frontal teaching, but parents also had to learn, how to communicate effectively between the child and the educator, or between the child and the classmates. They had to help them proceed in the curriculum and use online tools at the same time, while persuading their seedlings to take this form of learning seriously as well.
It is not a coincidence that at the end of the schoolyear, several educational institutions produced virtual diplomas to reward parents for taking an active part in the successful conclusion.
How parents "worked" to deserve this recognition was summarized by the mother of an elementary school student who we asked to share her experiences in online education ...
Google Classroom – parent view
On the 16th March Hungary has switched to digital learning. All students, teachers and parents are suddenly faced with a new method of teaching and learning. Our school is a primary school at the suburban area of Budapest so I can tell my experience about this point of view as a parent.
In our class the class master finally decided to choose Google Classroom. Reasons behind this solution are mainly the simplicity of the application. At the beginning all tasks arrived by e-mail. In our class there are 4-6 different teachers depends on the subjects and the faculties. So on the first week we parents received at least 4 mails by different teachers and in each mail there were different subject’s tasks with different deadlines. This meant every day 12-15 different tasks with different deadlines. At the end of the week it was very hard to follow all requirements what was done and what is still have to be done and what is the deadline.
In the meantime teachers were keep on searching the best application that suits our classroom needs and at the end they voted for Google Classroom. That was a very good solution that solved all our organizing problems.
Using Google Classroom you only need a Gmail account. It’s useful to create a Gmail account for the child. I our class students are 10 years old so nobody had an own e-mail account before. Some parents felt it’s too early to have an own e-mail account for the child. No need to worry because it’s safe if we are monitoring the account, and more safe if we set the e-mail by using Family Link.
Having an e-mail with the child’s name is important to have the real classroom feeling. In Classroom everybody is with his/her own e-mail using his/her own name and appears like this. If we want to use parents e-mail all classmates and teachers will see the “parent” and not the child. In these times when we are away from everybody virtual social life has an important effect and can ease the everyday life. Other simple reason is to have a separate e-mail account for classroom is the plenty of e-mails that you receive: every new task, every new private comment, every new grade, every task return is an e-mail message.
Classroom works on pc very well and has application for it that you can download on your mobile. Works on iOS and Android as well. Downloading the application on mobile makes using Classroom easier, because when you have to upload photos of the homework you just take the picture and immediately upload to Classroom.
Google Classroom is just as like normal classroom. Very user friendly: when you enter you can see the subjects on nice tiles that can be form by the teacher. On the tiles you can see the name of the subject, the name of the teacher, and the sign of the class. Background picture can be any photo or default image this can be changed by the teacher only. Under the subject you can see your task and deadline for it. If you have no task under your subject it means you have nothing to do with that subject. If you prefer you can start with calendar view instead of tiles. In this view you can see the current week and your tasks for each day. So here you can see how many works you have to be done today. Most simple is when you click on “To do” so can see the list of your current tasks. Here you can also see the deadlines, and also you might have task that has no deadline.
Wherever we start from Google Classroom is so simple that we can easily navigate to the subjects and can start to do our tasks. We can see everything on one page that is necessary for our work: explanation of the task, attached documents – that can be any office documents, video or photo, or even an attached link.
We can make public comments about the task that can be seen by all participant (students and teachers as well), and we can also send a private message to the teacher. When we are done with our work, we can attach a photo or upload a document and at the end we have to hand in the task. After handing in teacher receive our homework and can start to correct it. We can follow the status of our handed work: handed in, seen by teacher, graded by the teacher.
Google Classroom is perfect for virtual classroom. Knows everything that is needed for teaching, organizes well the tasks, easy to use, and gives us a notification if we are on the way to forget a task. What is missing? This application is only for virtual lessons. No common chat room where students can chat like they do between lessons at school. No possibility of video lessons, so virtual teaching should be done on other applications.
Google Classroom is very easy to understand it and use for even those parents who are not experts at informatics. Even children can learn it very quickly and can use it alone, so if learning material is done well by teacher parents no need to help for the child. Only if some homework has to be uploaded this can be done by parent – if the child doesn’t have an own mobile phone/tablet.
All together I’m very pleased with Google Classroom as a parent.
