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Google Classroom

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Re: Google Classroom

#61
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what our startup is doing. We are developing an online publishing platform for shareable and reusable learning activities where the educator can ask for specific formats in their students' response. Some of which can be auto-graded. The aim is to have a crowdsourced global repository of reusable activities that teachers can curate and push to their class so that their role is less in the introduction of mater…

Hi yutaka, good to meet you again on the Interwebs (we met at pycon). Can you tell us more about the "learning activities" are like? Is it all interactive demos and quiz questions or are lessons? Are the lessons specifically aligned to some standard (e.g. CCSS, see http://www.nctm.org/canadiancorrelations/ for Canadian equivalents). And about the company, do students pay? Do teachers who have produced the activities…

Oh wow, hi! Fancy running into you here! I hope you enjoyed Montreal!

To answer your questions:

Other than moderating for inappropriate content, the learning activities are whatever teachers think is useful. Whether it's aligned with curriculum standards is to the teacher's discretion. However, that being said, a month ago in Quebec we had a 'congress' of teachers from all around the province gather to create content with other teachers of similar disciplines, with the blessing of their respective schools and school boards. We are planning many more of these assemblies and we are developing a partnership with the province to encourage teachers to create content that's closely aligned with the provincial curriculum.

When we have a commanding audience in the US, we will reach out to whomever to aid us in creating or curating CCSS related material.

As for our company, students do not pay and teachers are not paid. (At least not by us.) Teachers' content will always be marked with their authorship giving proper credit where it's due and we have faith that great teachers will teach. Our hope is that teachers will find joy in witnessing the reach of their wisdom and that other teachers will share their wisdom in turn, so that everyone wins. Especially the student.

Our platform is always free to use for individuals and we only charge schools or school boards when we set up private portals for greater privacy controls. We also provide training and strong customer support for paying organizations.

I hope that answers your questions! I'd be happy to take more here (if it's appropriate) or at ytakahashi@challengeu.com!

Re: Google Classroom

#63
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I have used Moodle extensively both in my own courses (at a high school level) and in my own studies at university. I have had very little negative feedback from students, nor have I observed much difficulty in using it.

As a student I had to use Moodle in several courses. I, and I think most of my year, hated it with passion. Yet we had no place to send feedback to. A bunch of undergrads bitching about crappy UX - no one will listen to them. Maybe let's make the next a bit harder, so that those undergrads shut up and know their place. Damn, no one listen to our feedback about more serious issues. High-schoolers are even less likely…

My students speak up about every other thing that bothers them (trust me on this :P), so I don't see why their use of courseware would be any different.

I looked into a bunch of different LMS packages when we were looking for something to run at our school and Moodle was the best of the bunch that wasn't externally hosted (legal requirement for anything with student data). Our education department has since rolled their own LMS which is almost useless in comparison, so all in all I'm pretty happy with Moodle.

I know it isn't all sunshine and rainbows and there are plenty of things it could do better but it's better than the other LMS stuff I've used as a student and better than the other stuff I've found as a teacher.

Re: Google Classroom

#64
post #60

I think this is a brilliant move by Google. I think it's hardly about the teachers, and more about the students. Three things come to my mind watching this video: 1. Adobe software like Photoshop being easy to pirate made it easy for design students to use it exclusively, helping it become the de facto software used in industry 2. A while ago Microsoft was able to have Word/PowerPoint become part of the computing edu…

I am sitting in front of a Chromebook and have Microsoft Word and Powerpoint open in it. It's free to use[1]. [1] http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/online/office-online-colla...

Oh huh I didn't know about office online. I was going off of Google's support site which says "The Chromebook doesn’t work with some types of software you may be used to, like Microsoft Office..."[1]

[1]https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3265094?hl=en

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