Organize the Information in Your Google Classroom!
What Is It, and Why Use It?
Often, the inundation of information bogs down both students and faculty. This was easily the case in the past with Google Classroom. For instance, I post a daily synopsis of class each day for absent students. This is awesome if the student is absent, but it also makes finding other information such as assignments, reminders, and resources, much more difficult. Luckily, over the summer Google crafted the solution to this overwhelming onslaught of information: TOPICS.
What Do Topics Look Like?
If you previously used Google Classroom, the topics section is actually easy to miss. While it is very user-friendly, it assumes that the user knows it is there. Basically, the purpose of the topics, as far as I have seen, is to allow students and faculty to categorize the information within Google Classroom. This makes searching for a particular post or assignment a breeze. Let's take a look at how it all works. Here is a snapshot of my generic Google Classroom page.
On the left side of the screen, a box shows the following Topics: Absent Synopsis, Agenda, Assignments, and Resources. Clicking on any of these titles filters the Google Classroom page to show only stream items tagged with the particular topic.
If you look at the post in the stream above, you will also notice that the post "Organizer for Infographic" has a box labeled ASSIGNMENTS underneath the directions. The box indicates this post belongs to the topic Assignments.
Here is a scrolling screenshot of my RESOURCES posts:
Notice that only posts tagged RESOURCES appear in this view.
How To Use the Topics Feature
When you create a post, assignment, question, etc., a box pops up that looks like this:
1. Fill in all of the assignment/post information as you normally would.
2. Click the drop down arrow beside the heading Topic.
3. Select Create Topic.
4. Type in the label you want to use for the topic.
5. Click post as you normally would.
***Once you have your topic labels created, you simply select them from the dropdown menu instead of selecting Create Topic. ***
