Google Classroom: Opening the Door to Everyone

Guest post by friEdTechnology Associate & EdTech Guru, +JP Hale, Tweet him at @haleedtech

As both a Google for Education Certified Administrator and Trainer, I try to keep a healthy balance of safety and security and powerful instructional strategies in mind.  Recently that has become a bit more challenging with Google Classroom becoming available for any G Suite users.  The feature is off by default and has to be turned on in your district domain.

In this post we will examine the various settings to be considered.  These settings are managed by a Google Administrator for your specific domain.  (Learn more: Control User Access to Classroom)

• Users in your domain only—Only G Suite for Education users in your domain can join your domain’s classes

• Users in whitelisted domains—G Suite for Education users from domains you allow can join your domain’s classes. You need to whitelist these domains, and domain administrators from those domains need to whitelist your domain.

• Any G Suite user—Any G Suite user can join your domain’s classes.  That includes anyone outside your domain in other districts.

• Any user—Any G Suite user eligible for Classroom or personal Google Account users can join your domain’s classes

• Do you allow everyone in the district access to Google Classroom?

• Would your teachers benefit from joining classes outside your district for PD, etc?

• In order for users in other domains to join classes, an administrator must change the sharing permission on files.  Do you allow such sharing?

• Every Google classroom should be managed and monitored by a teacher.  That teacher provides the needed Class Code to join or has to send an email invitation.  Do your teachers know how to monitor their student accounts?

• A teacher can reset or disable this code at anytime if there are issues.  They can also delete any users that are added to the class.  Do your teachers know how to delete user access?

• Do you think parents will want to join this way instead of just getting the notifications?

Here are some questions to consider as you decide what is best for your district.

What are your thoughts?  Respond to this post or send JP a Tweet @haleedtech