Post an announcement - Google Classroom Tutorial

- In this video, we'll take a look at how to share an announcement with our class. First, I'm going to enter into my Animal Behavior section one, and remember that, by default, students will also be able to post announcements unless you change the settings by going to the students tab and the drop-down menu and changing the settings accordingly. Now, in order to add a comment or announcement to the class stream, I need to click back on to the stream tab, and then in the bottom right corner, I'm going to click on the plus sign. Several options will appear and I'm going to choose create announcement. Next, a popup box will appear and it gives us the option to customize our announcement. So, I'm going to paste in an announcement that I've already typed out and it's letting students know that we have a field trip coming up on Friday. I also mention that I've attached a permission form if they need another copy. Now, this brings me to the next point which is that we can attach something to this announcement. On the bottom, we have icons to attach a file. We can attach something from our Google Drive. We can attach something from YouTube and we can attach a link. In this case, I want to attach something from my Google Drive. So I'm going to click on the Drive symbol and then I want to select my Classroom folder and remember that, when we created our Google Classroom account, there was automatically a Classroom folder created in our Google Drive. When we created each of our classes, there was automatically a folder created for those classes. I'll click on my Animal Behavior section one, and I want to attach my field trip permission form. I'll click this and then click on Add. Now, as you can see, it has been added to this announcement. So if my announcement is ready to go, I can click now on POST in the bottom right corner to post that to the stream. If I click on the drop-down menu, it allows me to save it as a draft, and if I do this, you'll notice up top that we have one draft. We can close this, open it. I'll open that back up. Now, I'm not quite ready to post it yet because I want to show you one other feature which is really convenient, and that is the drop-down menu at the bottom. If I click here, it allows me to check any of the classes that I want to include this announcement in. This is nice because you can add an announcement to multiple classes without having to log in to each one of them to do so. Now, in this case, both of my Animal Behavior sections will be going on the field trip so I want to post this announcement in both of the class streams. Here I'll click on Animal Behavior section two as well and now I'm ready to post this. I'll click POST and, as you can see, this post has now been created and appears in the class stream for my Animal Behavior class. Now, in the upper right of every post, there will be an icon with three dots. If I click here, I have the ability to move that post to the top. In this case, it's grayed out because it's already at the top. I have the ability to edit the post and I can also delete it if it's one that I don't want to include at this time. So, I'll click off of that. At the bottom it says, Add class comment... and here, the teacher or students have the ability to add a comment to any of these announcements. Here, I'm going to add in, "Turn in permission forms to Mr. Schinkden". I'll click POST. As you can see, it stays very organized, and that comment is now attached to that announcement. Remember, students will have the ability to add comments unless you change that permission. I like to allow students to leave comments because a lot of times, they'll use the form to ask questions and other students will step in and answer some of those questions. Now, you also have the option to re-use a post, if necessary. We can do this by going to the icon in the bottom right, clicking on the plus, and when the options come up, at the top there's one called Reuse post. If I click on Reuse post, it will ask me which class the post was originally posted in. Now, I've put a post into my Animal Behavior section two just so I could show this. So I'll click here and then SELECT. And I have these different posts that are in there. I want to add this one about the project pitch being due on Monday. I'll click REUSE, and it brings up that post within this class. So, in this case, it was a very short post so it didn't save me that much time, but if this was a post that had a lot of typing or had some attachments, it's a very easy way to share that post without having to re-do it. Here I'll click POST, and there we have it, our post is now in the activity stream. Let's say that I want to move the field trip one up though, I'll click move to the top, and then this post will be moved up to the top. Communicating with your class and keeping them informed and updated is an important ingredient to a successful classroom. Using the Google Classroom platform is great because most students spend a lot of time online and they can access these announcements from anywhere that they're able to connect to the platform. Even if they weren't at school that day. Next, let's take a look at how we can communicate at the individual level by sending emails to students within Classroom.