If you're running a mostly asynchronous emergency remote teaching/learning system right now, you may be finding weekly “office hours” a struggle. After my first few office hours went by, I had to ask myself: how could I make that more effective? How could I help more students take advantage of these? If you've been asking questions like these, you may appreciate this paging system that Dr. Charles Youngs rigged up. Charles is a high school English teacher at Bethel Park High School just outside of Pittsburgh. Below, he (delightfully) walks us through the process.
Here's Charles:
I have an Assignment in Google Classroom's “Classwork” that's not an assignment called “Office Hours.” I instruct my students to use the private comment feature anytime they need me during our school's assigned office hours. I have notifications set up on my phone so I get a “bling” anytime a student is stuck or has a question. Then we can have a real time texting conversation in private comments, and it's all safely recorded in Classroom.
Here's a complete walkthrough of Charles' setup.
Major thanks to Charles for making this!
JoAnne Charette says
Awesome idea!!
Jennie J. says
I have an iPhone. How does he set notifications to ring when a Google Classroom comment occurs? I do have the Classroom app, but there’s crickets over there. (This is fantastic! Thank you for sharing.)
Charles Youngs says
Here’s how to set the settings in both iPhone and Classroom so they are in synch:
iPhone
1. Go to Settings
2. Click on Classroom listed in Settings.
3. Click on Notifications.
4. Click on Allow Notifications.
Classroom
1. Click the “hamburger” of three lines in the upper-left of your Classroom screen.
2. Scroll all the way to the bottom and click Settings.
3. Be sure your settings are sending notifications for “private comments on work.”
Geetha Ravi says
Dr. Youngs, This is an awesome idea to use with my High school Physics class. If they got questions on homework they post comments but there always used to be a time-lag by the time I see and respond. This notification will fix that. Thanks. Geetha