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Google Classroom

Google Classroom Alternatives

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

I like using Google Classroom and I know it is a pretty popular choice. But it isn’t the only option out there if you find that it isn’t doing what you want it to do, or you are having troubles using it. I have found a few Google Classroom alternatives that you can check out.

Google Classroom Alternatives

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

Here are a few of the learning management, virtual learning options that I have found that others are using instead of Google Classroom.

Google Classroom Alternatives

Blackboard Learn

Blackboard Learn Ultra has been redesigned with a modern, intuitive, fully responsive interface, Blackboard Learn now delivery a simpler, more powerful teaching and learning experience that goes beyond the traditional learning management system (LMS).

From what I can tell, there is no fee for using this platform. You do need to request a trial, which I did not do.

Edmodo

Edmodo is an educational technology company offering a communication, collaboration, and coaching platform to K-12 schools and teachers. The Edmodo network enables teachers to share content, distribute quizzes, assignments, and manage communication with students, colleagues, and parents.

From what I can tell, there is no fee, and it looks easy to set up and use. They include videos on how to go through the steps which is always helpful.

Showbie

I think that this could be used by homeschoolers. There are a couple different plans, the free plan would limit you in ways that Google Classroom does not.

Can I Use Google Classroom for Homeschool

Options that Aren’t for Homeschoolers

Learning platforms that you may have heard of and wonder if they are right for you.

Moodle

This is not a website for you to use, but a software that you can download, and install on your own server. I do not think that this is something homeschoolers would want to use.

It is free.

i-Ready

i‑Ready is not sold for homeschool or private home use. I only included it here because I have been asked and seen the question out there before.

PowerSchool

I believe through my own searching that this is only available to schools and not homeschoolers.

Schoology

I believe through my own searching that this is only available to schools and not homeschoolers.

Similar posts you may be interested in:

Google Classroom in Your Homeschool

Daily Assignment Pages for Google Classroom & Slides

How to Set up Google Classroom for Homeschool

Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: Google Classroom

Daily Assignment Pages for Google Classroom & Slides

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

You have finished your lesson plans for the month, and know exactly what you are going to be covering in each subject, each week, each day. Whether you are a homeschooler and public school teacher these daily assignment pages are great for using to keep your kids on task. They can be used in a variety of ways including in Google Classroom.

google classroom assignment pages - Google Classroom for Homeschool

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

What are assignment pages?

These are editable slides, used in Google Slides, a free platform for anyone to use, and children can access them on their own devices. You fill in the date, what you want to your child to do that day.

For Example:

  • under Agenda, math lesson, read from XYZ book
  • I add the posted notes are there for any notes you want to leave them

Be creative and use this tool to help your child with their independence. Austin is taking her first online course where she has a due date for assignments. A note for her might be “did you work on your creative writing assignment?”

Assignment Pages for Google Classroom For Homeschoolers too!

Homeschoolers! This is for you too! Life gets busy, and we aren’t all homeschoolers that are strictly homeschoolers, a lot of us have a lot going on and as our kids get older it is nice to give them a little bit of freedom so you can do other things through the day.

These assignment pages or slides can be uploaded to your Google Classroom. Your child will go to the class you have assigned to them, and see what you what them to do.

You can set these up to be used in individual classes so you child knows exactly what they are doing.

daily Assignment Slide + Google Classroom

The image above if just an example of one way we are using these daily assignment slides in our homeschool. I’m using them in Google Classroom, especially for my sixth grader. It gives her a sense of independence and is a way to help her learn how to manage her time and assignments.

I have created these to be flexible, use your own fonts them. Have fun keeping everyone, including yourself up to date with your homeschool plans. It on;y takes a few minutes to do included moving to Google Classroom.

With these you don’t have to worry about losing your planner when everything is already online.

Daily Assignment Pages for Google Classroom & Slides

If you like shopping on Teachers Pay Teachers you can find these Daily Assignment Slides – Google Slides – Google Classroom there.

I am going to be having more of these going up, I just am working on getting them in Google Slides and able to be editable for you, otherwise, they are just pretty pictures.

Daily Assignment Pages for Google Classroom & Slides google classroom for homeschooling assignments

Recommended Resources for these Assignment Slides

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: digital lesson planning, Google Classroom, google slides

How to Set up Google Classroom for Homeschool

by Ashley Mullen 2 Comments

Google Classroom isn’t just for use with public school. Us homeschoolers can use it to for teaching our kids. It is really easy to use once you get the hang of it. I’m going to walk you through just how easy it is to set up Google Classroom for homeschoolers.

How to Set up Google Classroom for Homeschool

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

Setting Up Google Classroom for Homeschool

The very first thing you need to do is go to Google Classroom. Now you need to create you first class. All you need to fill out is the class name, the rest you can leave blank.

How to Set up Google Classroom

After you have completed your class information it is time to create you first classwork, and assignment. Click you class, then at the top, click on Classwork. Now you can create your first assignment, quiz, question, or material.

You can edit this later on.

How to Set up Google Classroom

Now you just have to add your child into your class. You can invite them by email, or you can have them join the class with the class code that appears in the classroom header.

How to Set up Google Classroom

Google Classroom for Homeschool Parents

I love this for my older two children, 9 years and 11 years old. They get up, do their morning routine and then who ever is finished that first, hops on the the computer for math, Teaching Textbooks. Classroom gives them a little freedom from sitting around and waiting for me, or a sibling to catch up.

Google Classroom allows me to plan ahead, and not have to tell them what to do next, and then what to do next. That independence is worth a lot.

Once you have Classroom set up it gives you, the homeschool parent, time to work with other children. It gives you time to get something done around the house.

If you work, from home or out of the home, Google Classroom, might be your saving grace. You can assign assignments, giving them due dates, and you can mark their assignments. You don’t need to be at home to do any of this, you can do it from the coffee shop, library, or from work – while on your break of course.

Can I Use Google Classroom for Homeschool

Can I Use Google Classroom for Homeschool

Yes, you can use Google Classroom for homeschool. It is a great way to create reusable lesson plan, as you can reuse the assignments, and classes later on for you other children. You can archive classes and un-archive them later on.

Ways to use it in your homeschool this year:

  • assign readings, videos, tests, questions and more in advance
  • supplement learning and videos to watch that went along with readings
  • Google Docs meaning that you can go completely paperless with your learning – you can buy digital products on TpT and upload directly from your Google Drive
How to Set up Google Classroom

BONUS: You can take these plan on the go! If your child is away from home, whether at another parent’s house or at Gramma’s, you can still get their assignments to them.

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: Google, Google Classroom

How to Use Google Classroom in your Homeschool

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

There are so many benefits to using Google Classroom in your homeschool. It is a relative easy way to share lessons with your kids. It’s an easy way to plan lessons, and to save lessons for other years for other learners as they move up into higher grades.

How to Use google classroom in your homeschool

How to Use Google Classroom in your Homeschool

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

If your kids are like mine, they love to use technology. They love using the computer, or their tablets, if doesn’t seem to matter what they are doing.

Planning & Scheduling Lessons in Google Classroom

Whether you are a stay at home, homeschooling mom or a working homeschooling mom, having all our lessons in one place can be a time and energy saver.

You can create you classroom full of lessons for the day or the week, or even the whole year if you’d like. You can sit down and do your planning, your scheduling for each lesson, for each subject at one time. Maybe you can use this to always be one step ahead.

Then you can schedule when your child is suppose to do the work, and when the work is due to be finished.

Bonus: Reuse these lessons for younger students later on.

10 Ways to Use Google Slides for Teaching

Link to Other Content

You can link to other, outside if you will content. You have the ability to link to YouTube videos, and other websites for each lesson that you create. No more having a list of bookmarks and hoping that your child uses the right one.

Testing

Google Classroom allows you to create open ended, or multiple choice questions in their testing feature.

Use Google Classroom for Your Homeschool to Budget

This is a great way to stretch your homeschool budget. Digital products in general are a great way to stretch your budget, as they tend to be lower priced, and you can reuse the material.

Track Your Child’s Progress

You can see when your child has last been active in the classroom. You can set dates for when you child can work on an assignment, but you can also set a due date for assignments. There is also the option to reduce the last minute rush to complete assignments by sending reminders in the days prior to the due date.

Google Classroom also makes keeping track of grades a breeze. This is especially handy if you need to report to a school board, or for creating a transcript.

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Complete Customization

All your lessons are able to be completely customized to your needs and wants. We are able to add images to the lessons, whether they are for writing prompts, or as examples, or just to add a pop of color and fun, and interest to your lessons.

Create your own class header image, similar to Facebook header/cover images to make each class have it’s own look.

Google Classroom gives you the ability to create a digital curriculum of your own. Or to add a digital element to your print curriculum. You can create these lessons once, and have them set up for future use.

Setting Up Google Classroom for Your Kids

Setting up your child on Google Classroom is easier than it might seem. They will need a Gmail account (email) but that is easy to set up, and you don’t have to let them have access to it for anything other than school.

Setting Up Google Classroom for Your Kids

Once your child in the classroom, they can use this code to join the class. OR You can invite/add them to the class, in this setting:

Setting Up Google Classroom for Your Kids

The ability to use your Google Drive account, and all the Google suite including Google Slides, Google Sheets, etc, is a bonus. You can create the slide shows, buy slideshows for your children, or have them create their own.

There are so many different ways to use Google Classroom in your homeschool. Homeschool parents can be resourceful and this is just another tool to use, and make work for your homeschool. At no cost to you.

This is all available to you to use for free. It does have a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really quite easy to use and can save you time in the long run.

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: Google Classroom

Google Classroom in Your Homeschool

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Google Classroom. Have you heard of it and thought it was only for public school? I did, but then again, when I first looked in to it, it was only for “teachers”, but they have since opened it up and homeschoolers are able to use it easily now as well. Google Classroom has made making lesson planning easier, and keeping track of everything a breeze. Read on to learn more about it.

Google Classroom in Your Homeschool

Google Classroom in Your Homeschool

*This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.*

Why Use Google Classroom?

As a free online learning platform, Google Classroom offers several benefits for homeschoolers:

Accessibility

No more the dog ate my homework or I couldn’t find it. Your child can access their work from any device. Even when you need to be somewhere else, it can go with you. Especially when you choose to make it able to be accessed offline.

Paperless

Less waste, less money spent. Perfect for budget friendly homeschooling, and those looking to reduce their waste. You don’t have to print off all those PDFs, just add them in where needed and have them used directly there. (Read on for more info on that.)

Time Saver

Upload the work once, and you’ll have it there for your other children when they are ready to use it. You can reuse assignments later on, you may have to change it a little, due dates and assigned dates for example but the base of it will be there.

All you need to do is archive it and pull it out later on when you need it.

In calendar view, you can see what you want to get done each day at a quick glance.

Use it to Add More to Your Curriculum

Use Google Classroom in your homeschool lessons to add more to it. Consider using Google Classroom in your homeschool to add additional online elements to your child’s homeschool day and your print curriculum.

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Adding Resources for your Google Classroom

With everything that has happen in 2020 so far, it is becoming easier and easier for you to find digital resource that you can use in Google Classroom. This means you can find a lot of digital resources to add to you curriculum for the year, and can add to your Google Classroom.

There are great Chrome Extensions to making adding content to your Drive, and then to your classroom.

Google Classroom in Your Homeschool

Setting Up A Classroom

Setting up is super simple. Go to Google, click the nine little dots in the top right corner, now you may need to scroll down and click MORE to find Classroom but it will be there. Now you can start creating your classroom.

You can attach file files to your class including: Google Docs, Word Docs, and PDF (which is awesome for all those resources I have on my laptop for my kids!) directly from your laptop or desktop. You can also use Google Drive, YouTube and you can add links to other websites.

You can assign the assignment to be available right away or schedule it for another day or time of the day. You also have the option of giving it a due date. Personally, I like both the scheduling and due date feature. Sometimes my kids just want to get it all done, and, for my oldest, she needs to see the date it needs to be done by or she’ll procrastinate a little, not always, but sometimes.

Learn more about setting up your Google Classroom.

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: digital learning, Google, Google Classroom, Online learning

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A Little About Me

I'm Ashley, a Canadian secular homeschool mom of 3, living in Nova Scotia.

I share our adventures in homeschooling and parenting.

You can usually find us at the library surrounded by books.
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