Friday, December 18, 2015

What's new in Google Classroom? Exciting news about grading and other features

There's some new features that were announced this week that some of you might be interested in.  They're listed below, along with the link.  But most of it deals with how google classroom handles grading.  If you haven't done so already, you might bookmark or save the link below to the google for education blog which shows updates and also ideas for using google.

http://googleforeducation.blogspot.com/2015/12/new-in-Classroom-saving-time-while-grading.html

New in Classroom: saving time while grading
Posted: Tuesday, December 15, 2015    
Posted by Anibal Chehayeb, Google Classroom Software Engineer 

We built Classroom to save teachers time, and we know that grading is one of those tasks that can involve a lot of little time wasters. In fact, students have turned in more than 200 million assignments via Classroom to date, which adds up to a lot of grading hours. Today, we’re launching new features to help make grading a little faster and easier.

*Export Grades to Google Sheets: In addition to .csv files, you can now export your grades directly to Google Sheets. The Sheets template includes a class average and an average per student. If you have ideas about how we can make this export to Sheets even more useful, please leave us feedback by clicking the question mark at the bottom left of the Classroom page, then choosing “send feedback.” 

*Easier to update grade point scale: We know not all assignments are out of 100 points. You've always been able to change the point value, but a lot of teachers had trouble finding this feature. So we’ve made it easier to change the grading scale to any number you need it to be. 

*Keyboard navigation for entering grades: When you’re entering lots of grades, you need a fast way to navigate from student to student. We’ve added the ability to use the up and down arrows to move directly from the grade entry area for one student to another. 

*Sort by name on grading page: In addition to sorting students by completion status (done, not done), you can now sort by first or last name. 

*And in case you missed it last month, you can now add a private comment for a student when you’re returning their work. 

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Flubaroo - update on sharing or emailing student grades


For those of you using Google Forms and grading them with Flubaroo - there has been an update on how to email or share grades with your students.

From the Flubaroo Blog: 
Flubaroo Blog‎ > ‎

New Ways to Share Grades!

posted Nov 25, 2015, 3:01 PM by Dave Abouav   [ updated Dec 1, 2015, 4:02 PM ]
With this latest Flubaroo update you can now Share Grades via Google Drive, and alsoPrint Out hard-copies of grades to distribute. Read below for more details.

Share Grades via Google Drive
Notice that the familiar 
"Email Grades" in the Flubaroo menu is now called "Share Grades".


This reflects the fact that email is no longer the only way to share grades with students! If you choose to share via Google Drive, each student will get their own Google Doc with a summary of their grades, similar to the example below:

You'll own all of the shared documents, which will be neatly stored in a folder in your Drive:


Students will be able to find their document in the "Shared With Me" section of their Drive. And if you chose to share grades via both email and Drive, then the student's email will also have a link to their shared document at the top.

Checkout this article to learn more about sharing grades via Google Drive.


Print Grades
For those of you who need hard-copies, such as for younger students, you can now also print grades as well! Flubaroo will generate a single Google Doc with grade reports for all students that can easily be printed out and distributed to students. See this article for more details on how to print grades.

I hope you enjoy the new additions. Please email any suggestions or issues to the Flubaroo Discussion Forum (flubaroo-discussion-forum@googlegroups.com).

Dave (author of Flubaroo)