Google Classroom vs Team Drives

PLC Resources. You want your staff and team members to have them, copy them, edit them, and share them. Team Drives seems to be the perfect solution, and in many ways, it is. BUT I would take a look at Google Classroom as a really efficient alternative.

First, Team Drives are a great way to "house" documents that belong to everyone. Every document in there is accessible by everyone, and although users' permissions to those documents may vary, everyone can see everything. Here are some pros and cons of Team Drives according to teachers:

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• ownership and access to all files
• nice for departmental documents you need no matter who is there
• any documents, slides, or files created/uploaded are automatically shared with the people in the team to collaborate from the get-go
• works well for sharing files within departments; since no one 'owns' the file, if a person leave the domain, their files stay
  

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• you don't have the ability to organize files in a Team Drive like you would in a regular Drive, like adding a Doc someone shared with you to a folder in your Drive so you can access it easily
• files created in your own Drive don't easily transfer to Teams; it's easier to just create a new file in Teams 
• not an efficient way (yet) to keep a file in your own Drive while also easily adding a copy to the Team
• files copied from your Drive into Teams don’t auto update when edited in your personal Drive
• members need to make sure they remember to 'make a copy' before they start revisions

*Thank you to Jordan O'Donnell, Mattie Walton, Shaundel Krumheuer, and Linda Horst for their contributions to this post!

The biggest "hang-up" seems to be with the editing and sharing capabilities when people are not clear on how to use the resources held in Team Drives. Google Classroom's ease of use, delivery, copying, sharing, and housing of resources might be the perfect alternative.

Sharing files

Creating a post in Google Classroom is as easy as clicking on the plus sign in the bottom right corner. As the teacher in a Classroom environment, you have 4 options for posting. You can:

• Reuse a post - SUPER handy when managing multiple Classrooms!
• Create a question - simply ask and get responses in either multiple-choice or short-answer format
• Create an assignment - share files or links and request action on resources
• Create an announcement - share files, links, or just information with participants/students in the class

When you simply want to share information, or even resources, an announcement is the perfect means of delivery.

In this example, I not only attached a link, but I also included the shortened URL in the informational text part of the announcement so that users would be able to copy and paste it or even make a note of it for later. They can always come back to the Classroom to access this link, but seeing the shortened URL (especially if it is memorable) will allow users to access it without going through that step in the future.

Assignments are most useful when you want to require some sort of action on the resources you share. For example, if you want to share your building's PLC planning sheet with staff members (aka the "students" in this scenario) and not only make sure that everyone gets a copy but that they also compete and submit it to you for review, create an assignment. You can pull your template right out of your own Drive, and Classroom will generate a brand new copy for users (retaining the integrity of your original document).

In my example above, I elected to make a copy of this template for each class member. Besides being an easy way to force a copy, the bonus of this method is that Google will automatically name the students' newly created documents for them according to your naming scheme; their names will be appended on whatever title you give the file. For example:

Whether you decide to request "students" to actually turn in these assignments or not is completely optional; the second they click on the link to OPEN the assignment, this document is not only created and named, but it is also filed away in a Google Drive folder that is automatically created when you make the assignment. This makes them incredibly easy to find and manage.

Students can also post and create their own content (without using a template from you). For PLCs, this is useful when teachers need to share files or documents they create in their PLC meetings (posters with group norms, graphs from data collection, etc).

Finding and managing files

There are several ways to find the files that students add to Google Classroom. It's useful to know that the instant you create a Classroom environment, Google automatically establishes a folder in your Drive that will collect everything from that class. In fact, the second you initiate Google Classroom, whether as a teacher or as a student, a folder is created for you! Aptly enough, this folder is called "Classroom," and it can be found in the top level of your Drive (the first group of folders you see when you click on your Drive).

You can also find and access this folder right from Google Classroom itself. When you click on the About menu/tab at the top of the class, you will see a link to the Drive folder on the left side of the screen:

Regardless of how you choose to navigate to the folder, it's going to be what's inside that matters. For every assignment you create, Google will again automatically create a sub-folder within that class folder, named with the same title you give the assignment. So for each assignment you create, you will get a brand new sub-folder, which will contain all of the work your students turn in. If you create the template, they won't even have to actually click "Turn in" for you to see it; the instant they click on that assignment, their document will be created inside this folder. For an open-ended assignment you create that does not have a template (ex: "Submit your group norms;" groups may elect to create a poster on Canva, a Google Doc with a bulleted list, or even a presentation in Slides), class members will have to actually "Turn in" their creation or attachment in order for it to appear in the folder.

Accessing student work

Another really easy way to see these documents is to simply go to the assignment itself. Clicking on the title of the assignment in your Classroom Stream will pull up every student's work; you can access those documents by clicking on any of them in the Student Work "tab":

**NOTE: When you open these documents in this environment, remember that you are opening the "students'" actual work! If they are working on it at the same moment you open it, you will see them working live . . . and they will see you visiting! Take a moment to comment or give some feedback while you're there!

The last critical thing for you to know is that once a class participant clicks "Turn in" on an assignment, Google transfers ownership of that file over to you, the teacher. There are useful reasons for this, but the problem is that the submitter (student) no longer has editing rights to his/her own document. This can be easily remedied if he/she simply clicks "unsubmit" on the assignment (you will still be able to see it, and it will still be in the folder), OR if you select his/her name (see the image above) in that assignment and return it.

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With its ease of use, efficiency of access to files (by teachers and​ "students"), and ability to do so much more than just file sharing, my opinion today is that Google Classroom would definitely be a front-runner in its "in-Ann's-imagination" competition against Team Drives . . . for now.