Google Classroom Reviews

Google Classroom is a learning management system. The features I used most was introducing myself in the main forum and providing assignments to the classroom. It was very good in terms of getting messages out quickly and uploading certain documents that were instrumental for the students' lessons. They were able to receive feedback as well as provide messages to me. If I needed to send a message to a student individually, I was able to do that very easily, and grade whatever assignments they submitted.

I can't address how it improved the organization and this was the only platform I used. I can say that the training and onboarding was simple and seamless.

What I liked most about Google Classroom was that it was very easy to communicate with the students and simple for me to learn even though it was my first time using it. I was able to learn the features very well by navigating through different discussion forums and becoming proficient in using the solutions. Ease of use was the best feature.

Some platforms are for more sophisticated users and may not be easy for novice users to understand or navigate. Ease of use is a very important aspect when teaching young children. If you lose their focus early on, it's very hard to get it back.

The ability to upload certain things instrumental for my class and lessons was also very valuable. Additionally, it was very simple to assign points to the students.

Students are used to having accumulated points and letter grades. Google Classroom should add a feature by which you can toggle in between points and letter grades. Accumulated points mean less than letter grades unless there's a prize or reward for most accumulated points. However, it would be nice if there's a way to toggle between allocating points and allocating grades.

I've used Google Classroom intermittently. The first time I used it was to teach young children for a period of a quarter. It was during a teaching rotation since we were doing everything virtually because of the pandemic and the people that managed the process had been looking at various online and onboarding classroom settings solutions. They decided Google Classroom was the best venue for that. 

I have used Google Classroom for approximately one year.

Google Classroom was reliable in my usage. I did not have any glitches or any issues.

I had a class of approximately 20 students that could use Google Classroom at one time. I never had any problems with my students using the solution, it ran smoothly.

I was using the solution twice a week.

I did not contact the technical support from Google Classroom. I did have a few training modules that were helpful.

I have previously used Microsoft Teams. It was good but Google Classroom was more reliable with fewer glitches and issues.

The organization was the main user of Google Classroom and they would add us (volunteer teachers) onto their platform. I was not involved in the implementation.

I do not think it was difficult for the organization to add me to the solution. We had a training session and they were supportive of any additional questions that we had, especially for people like myself who were using it for the first time. From my experience it was really easy to do. There was an important time when I needed to use Google Earth in one of my classes and it was very easy to do. Additionally, I had to provide Zoom information which was straightforward for the students to access and join me in the classroom.

I had one or two training sessions for approximately an hour each where someone with more experience in Google Classroom went through the features and gave examples on how to do X, Y, and Z. We were able to do a Google search if we had questions about other features we wanted to do and share that amongst each other. It was very easy for a first-time user to become acclimated to it.

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I would highly recommend Google Classroom. It's easy to access and use, which is a very strong feature. I can't emphasize that enough because one of the things I noticed, especially in this pandemic, is that everyone has different levels of expertise. Some people use the platform for the first time while others are gurus - there are ranges. To have a platform whereby those who are experienced and those who are new users are both comfortable with it speaks to the versatility of the platform.

I rate Google Classroom a nine out of ten.

I'm a Google-certified educator, as well as a data scientist. It is a learning platform, and we use it for classrooms and communication between teachers and students.

Google Classroom is not a traditional learning management system. It is different in many ways because Google Classroom is really for a classroom. Normally, when you have a traditional learning management system, you need it for the whole school. You need to install a lot of applications, and you need to use a hosting service. You need to have a third-party company, but in order to have Google Classroom, all you need is an account, and individually, any teacher who wants to use it can just create a classroom. That's it. You have total control over everything. In the classroom, you can do video teaching, and you can conduct classes and put assignments, grades, etc. You can add learning material.

Before Google Classroom, I had a lot of regular hard copy folders, and I had to keep a copy of all of the activities I used in the classroom so that I could use them in the future. It was almost impossible for me to find them when I needed them, but by using Google Classroom, everything is sorted, and I can easily access anything I need.

When I first started using it, I also had a lot of digital resources. I had to save them all the time in folders because I had a PC at home, and I had a PC at school. Whenever I needed a document, it was impossible to find. With Google Classroom, I can put everything in one place in a nice and organized way. I can put anything by topic, and there is one place for everything. The best thing that I like about Google Classroom is its integration with Google Drive. Everything you put there is saved in Google Drive, and you can access your files from any device and anywhere.

Another benefit is communication. Normally, Google Classroom isn't meant for communication, but, in fact, it is a wonderful tool for communication between teachers and students. That's because it's difficult for you to remember students' emails all the time. They might not even have an email address, but when you put something in the stream, they are notified. You can also add parents or guardians so that they can keep track of their child's activities. They can see whether they have submitted their assignments. They can follow everything, and they can also see teachers' messages.

Another good thing is that when you are teaching something in the classroom but you don't have time to finish or some of the students need more time, you can just put the assignment or task there. Students can then complete it later at their own pace without any stress. 

Previously, when you covered a topic in class, you were just limited to your books and other things in the classroom, but thanks to Google Classroom, you can expand your lessons. You can give a lot of extra resources. You can put links in Google Classroom where students can see videos and do interactive and fun activities.

It enables cooperation and collaboration among teachers. You can add co-teachers in Google Classroom, and you can share things.

Reusability is what I like the most about Google Classroom. For example, I'm a computer science teacher, and I'm currently teaching programming to year nine students, but next week, I'll start teaching year eight students. I can just reuse the same material. All I need to do is create learning material, such as videos, once, and then it's already there. I don't have to prepare everything again from scratch. I don't have to print anything. It is really economical. Since I started using Google Classroom, I rarely print anything.

Company-wise, the most important feature is that it is a product of Google. It is a part of Google Suite. With Google Classroom, you can easily embed a Google Sheet, Google Doc, or Google Form. You can easily create a quiz in Google Form. It is integrated with Google Drive. So, everything is on Google Drive, and you can easily use it. With single sign-on, you can use it with Google Apps as well. 

Another important feature of Google Classroom is that it is very easy to use. In the middle of March 2020, in Poland, the government suddenly decided that schools were going to be online. We were already in Google Suite, and I gave a single training to my staff members on how to create a classroom, and the next day, we just went live and started teaching online without any interaction. It wouldn't be possible with any other system available so far. 

For school administrators, Google is paying a lot of attention to data protection. There are a lot of tweaks, and you can set proper permissions. 

Google is adding new features all the time, which is very helpful. During the past two years, Google has added a lot of new features. For example, in the classroom, you didn't have Google Meet before. You had to create a Google Meet meeting first, and you had to put links there. They embedded this, which made life really easy. In addition, initially, students could enter the class and they could talk and do a lot of things. They have now limited it. Similarly, to make lessons interactive, Google introduced a new product called Jamboard, which is just like a whiteboard where you can write things down. They have embedded it into Google Meet. During the meeting, you can click Jamboard, and it is automatically shared with all people who are in the meeting. Everybody can write on the same board and collaborate. They're constantly adding new products. For example, about a month ago, I got an invitation from Google that they wanted to introduce a new product, but they didn't say anything about the product. They met senior Google-certified educators. I was one of them. They asked questions about the kind of problems we had with Google Classroom and their other educational products. They mentioned that they are going to introduce new products and new features based on the feedback they got from us. So, they're listening, which is a good thing.

They have recently embedded Google Meet with it, but Google Meet needs to be improved. It is not like Zoom, which has a lot more functionality. So, when it comes to video teaching, Google Meet still needs a lot of improvement.

There are some websites where you can create activities and guide students to do them in a sequence. You can guide them to do an activity first and then go to the next one. You can automatically link activities, and there is a flow, but in Google Classroom, you don't have that feature. All you can do is put the material and tell students what to do. For example, I have an assignment, but I want my students to read a particular text before that. They need to tick it, or they need to click next before they start doing the activity. After that, I want them to do comprehension questions or something else. In Moodle, there are activities such as assignments, quizzes, etc. There is a lesson module in which you can put all of the activities in a flow. So, you can decide what they need to do first. If students answer a question incorrectly, you can decide and design to which page do they need to go next, and which part do they need to review. This is currently missing in Google Classroom.

I've been using Google Classroom for about eight years. Google Classroom is a part of Google Suite, and I have been using Google Suite right from the beginning. Unofficially, I've been using Google Suite since 2004. That's because before Gmail officially became public, you could sign up through an invitation and test it and give feedback. Officially, Google Suite was launched in 2006, but Google Classroom wasn't there in the beginning. They added Google Classroom later, and I've been using it right from the beginning.

This is my third international school since I started using Google products. In all these three schools, I brought, introduced, and implemented Google Suite. When I joined my current school three years ago, they were using Microsoft Office 360, and we just switched to Google. It has always been reliable because it is really a big company. Google is the biggest tech company. 

About two years ago, I conducted an online and nationwide math contest in which students from all over Poland took part. I was using a different cloud-based test system because it was created just for these purposes, but we had a lot of trouble. The server was down, and we couldn't reach out to people. One of the advantages of Google Classroom is that Google is behind it, and they almost never have downtime. It happened only once, but it was for a short time. All Google services were out of order for an hour or something like that. I don't remember any problem other than that.

At the school where I'm working, we have six campuses. We have nearly 1,000 students. They were all in Google Classroom during the pandemic. We did not have any problems. We knew what functionalities were available, and we designed our activities based on this one. We did not have any problems. 

Anyone can create a classroom. Normally, a teacher creates the class for himself or herself. If you have your own Gmail account, you can just go to classroom.google.com and create a classroom. You can share it with other teachers. As a teacher, you can invite another teacher, and you can invite students. For each student, you can nominate a parent or a guardian. So, basically, there are three types of users available in Google Classroom.

Google Classroom became popular after COVID-19. Many people weren't even aware of it until then. Before COVID-19, I kept telling my colleagues that this is a wonderful tool, and they should give it a try. They might find it useful, but they said that they were really busy with other things, and they would take a look at it when they have some time. Now that COVID-19 is over, they are still using it and they are finding it useful. If you don't let them use it, you will be in trouble because things are different now. People will definitely keep using it because it is really useful, and people have realized that such solutions are really beneficial.

They have a lot of forums and other resources, and you can find a solution for almost everything. I often get invitations from Google about a particular product of theirs. If they want to launch something new, they inform us and they exchange ideas with us. 

I'm just a regular user, and I'm pretty satisfied with Google's approach. They really listen and add new features. We had a lot of problems at the beginning with Google meetings. Students were kicking each other out of the meetings, and they even kicked a teacher out, and in a month or so, Google embedded Meet into Google Classroom, and they added some restrictions. They're closely observing, watching, and listening to our advice.

I'm a Moodle specialist as well. I wrote my graduation thesis on Moodle as a blended learning tool. I have two or three Moodle systems installed all the time. Moodle is an open-source system, which is free of charge. It has a lot of functionalities. 

The main feature of Google Classroom is that it is a part of Google Suite, and it is integrated with other Google products. If I had to use only Google Classroom itself, I wouldn't use it. I would go for Moodle. So, being a part of the Google environment is the biggest value add of Google Classroom. It is a part of their package, which makes Google Classroom stand out, even though it has fewer features than some of the other learning management systems.

Another feature of Google Classroom that I like is that it doesn't have a lot of functionalities. It has all the functionalities that teachers need, but there are no extra things to make things confusing for teachers, whereas Moodle has a lot of functionalities, which is something I like personally. I like to have a lot of functionalities myself, and that's what I like about Moodle, but when it comes to my teachers and my colleagues, Google is much easier because everything available there is easy to understand for them. It is easy to use.

Zoom is a perfect video call solution. I have a club for our high school students for which I'm using Zoom Pro. I'm still using Google Classroom because they are different things. Google Classroom is a platform where you can put all of your material, but instead of using Google Meet, I'm using Zoom for my video teaching. I have also tried Microsoft Teams, but I don't find it to be a good system. They seem to have created it for professional companies, and then suddenly, they seem to have changed it into an educational tool. It isn't as effective as Google Classroom.

Google Classroom is in the cloud. Therefore, you don't have to do anything to host it. You only need to create a Google account. Google gives the service to educational institutions free of charge, so you only need to register with your school's domain, and they verify it. After that, just like Gmail, they're hosting the service on their own servers, and you use it. It's a 100% cloud-based solution. Google also allows some of the applications, such as Google Sheets and Google Docs, to work offline, but everything is totally cloud-based and on Google servers.

You don't need to download it. When you're signed in to your Gmail, all of the Google products are there, including Google Classroom. You just go to classroom.google.com, and that's it. When you log in with your ID, it recognizes which company you are joining from, and it shows you the classrooms that you've created as a teacher or assigned as a student. It is totally in the cloud.

We are an educational institution, and it is free of charge for us. Normally, if you are a private company, you have to pay a lot of money to get this service, but they are giving it for free to schools. 

I would definitely recommend this product, especially for K12 schools. That's because when the students eventually go to the university, at some point, they will take online lessons. There are various types of learning management systems, and some of them are more complicated, and Google Classroom is a kind of exposition. As an online solution, it is very simple and very easy. A year three, four, or five students can manage to go there and log in without any problem. So, especially for K12 schools, I would highly recommend Google Suite over Microsoft. If you are already in Google Suite, I would definitely recommend Google Classroom.

I would rate Google Classroom an eight out of ten. It is the best, but there is always room for improvement.

I use the solution for taking online sessions. It was used mostly during the pandemic. We use it for giving assignments and receiving submissions.

The product gives me visibility. I can see the submission times. I can see all the submissions in a central place. It is useful. I'm pretty happy with what I'm getting right now. I’m from an IT background. I am quite comfortable with the user interface. It is a useful tool.

The stability could be improved.

I have been using the solution for the last three years.

The product is pretty much stable. I did not have any issues. I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

The requirement was not for large batches. We had a batch of 30 to 40 students. We are quite happy with the product. There are 30 to 40 students in every class. There are approximately six classrooms in every batch. Currently, we are not using it. It was extensively used during the pandemic.

The setup is fairly straightforward.

The setup took me five minutes. We didn't require support to set up the solution. To set up the solution, we created classrooms for specific classes, the links were sent to the students, and they joined the class. We did not need any technical staff to deploy the product. We were able to figure out things.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Our teachers use it to give us assignments. During the lockdown, they also uploaded exams so that we could answer the questions while on camera with Google Meet.

We had about 70 students use this solution in our classroom.

When a teacher uploads material, all students connected to that class will receive the same information at the same time. I have found this to be a valuable feature.

I also like that the material remains in Google Classroom until the teacher removes it.

The UI is user-friendly, and you don't have to have prior experience to use the solution.

I would like to see a master list of documents with folder names so that it is more convenient for students to know whether they have submitted a particular document. At present, you need to go to each classroom to check what you have submitted.

I've been using Google Classroom for more than two years.

It's a stable solution.

The initial setup was straightforward for me as a student using the solution. I was able to understand how to use it in about an hour.

I would rate Google Classroom at eight on a scale from one to ten because it's convenient and easy to use, and you can quickly learn to use it.

We use Google Classroom for better lessons, meetings, communications, and emails.

The most valuable features of Google Classroom are the meetings, mark book, and assignments.

We found that  Google Classroom is it is missing a lot in current engagement. We know it has got guardian access, where it sends the reports to the guardian at the end of either the week or the month, depending on how you set it. However, it lacks collaboration between the teacher, student, and parents. The engagement is mostly between the student and the teacher. If you have a school similar to ours, where you're dealing with little children where the parent is supposed to be engaged, you need a system that can engage them as well. It's good for senior students, but not for our students.

I have been using Google Classroom for approximately 10 years.

The stability of Google Classroom is good.

Google Classroom is scalable.

We have approximately 300 people using Google Classroom in my organization.

The support from Google Classroom is very good.

We are using FireFly in parallel with Google Classroom. We compared the two head to head. We had to use Firefly to complement the areas which Google Classroom does not provide, such as the collaboration aspect where the parent is not engaged. Additionally, there's no proper tracking on Google Classroom. Firefly is a good competition for Google Classroom.

The initial setup of Google Classroom is easy.

Google Classroom is a free solution. There is paid version that has more options, the cost is approximately eight dollars per student per month.

Google Classroom is a good start if you are only starting with VLE. It is cheaper, it doesn't cost anything. You can get a free plan which can help you experiment and see what your school needs. Then from there, they can consider the paid version, which can allow you to add on whatever you are missing. However, from what I have seen it is not good for early learning, but much better for high school.

I rate Google Classroom an eight out of ten.

This solution integrates with all the other Google apps including Google Calendar and Google Docs. This makes it very easy to manage. 

It would be useful if this solution had its own online teaching platform with an integration with a Google video conferencing tool. We would also like to have access to a quiz-making or exam-making tool such as that found in Moodle. We would like to be able to create a pool of questions that can be randomly pulled to create different assessments for each student. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. We have 15 to 20 faculty members and 400 students using this solution. 

We have previously used Moodle which is an overall better solution than Google Classroom. However, Moodle does have some limitations including requiring a server and other resources. Google classroom operates using Google Cloud for free and there is no hardware needed.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Some users of Google Classroom who do not have technical skills may find implementing and using this solution quite challenging. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

I used Google Classroom to give out unique copies of documents to my students, to provide them with opportunities to respond back to work that they were working on, and to give them grades.

Assigning a unique copy of Google Classroom to students and giving out information is what the solution excels at.

There are a lot of things that need to be fixed in order for it to be called a learning management system. I think that's where a lot of people are very confused in terms of what Google Classroom actually does. Google Classroom is not a learning management system. A learning management system allows teachers to grade with authenticity and doesn't provide only one grade for a particular document or assignment.

Google Classroom only allows for teachers to give out one grade based on work across a larger spectrum of grades. It does have its own limitations in terms of how students see the information. It doesn't allow for folders within the classes, or teachers to group information. What is provided is a list of activities or things that students need to complete.

If Google wants to call it a learning management system, which Google does, it's not. I've used learning management systems that are far greater and better at organizing content, systems, and information than Google is. I work in technology and education and I have a strong basis as to what I'm talking about.

In order for Google to better get into that space, they need to listen to teachers when teachers are willing to give their feedback. I used to comment in the Help Center all the time or provide suggestions to Google on things that I was experiencing or the issues that I was experiencing. The solution is not user-friendly for teachers or students. However, it is user-friendly in terms of it being clean but once you start giving out multiple assessments or multiple assignments, there's no easy way to organize it causing students to get confused.

For a student who's in first grade, who's six years old, for them to use Google Classroom is not going to be something that I would suggest, because they're going to get lost in it. Even somebody who's in fourth grade, which is what I used to teach, fourth graders have a hard time using Google Classroom, because it's difficult for them to keep up with their assignments. If the solution does not have an organizational structure, which it doesn't have, there's no way for you to easily see which assignments have been turned back and why they've been turned back.  I can give back an assignment, but it won't tell the student whether the student needs to turn it back in for a redo, turn it back, or not turn it back in. For example, If I want them to see the comments, or if I want them to see the information, I have to turn it back into them or give it back to them, but I don't want them to turn it back into me. It shows up as something that they need to turn back into me on their end, they think they do need to. It's just a very confusing feature overall.

Google has focused more on the teacher's end rather than what the students see. This could improve. There's not an ability to assign multiple grades. I can grade it, but I would have to give them an overall grade, "Overall, you received a 90." Whereas a lot of schools are doing standards-based grading now. "Overall, you received a 90," doesn't always work anymore. What it should be is, "Overall, on the writing part you received a 90, but on the information, you received a 50 and on this, you receive another mark, and on your writing skills you received this." There should be that aspect of it if you're going to call yourself a learning management system.

I have been using Google Classroom for approximately five years.

Google Classroom is reliable. It has been stable in my usage. There are times when it does lag and become slow, but that's if Google is having its own issue. If Google's having an issue and Google Classroom's having an issue, you are out of luck and will not be able to operate. There were a lot of the Amazon AWS issues that we were having throughout this year, that caused some problems in Google Classroom.

Google Classroom is scalable but they need to make significant changes for it to be a leading solution in this marketplace. People are using it because it's convenient to provide individual copies to students, which is amazing. However, there are other platforms that can tap into it, and they're doing it better.

This solution was extensively being used, we were remote working at that time.

Google Classroom supports are difficult to get a hold of. When you provide a feedback item, no one will email you and asks, "Hello, why did you suggest this?"  I would assume that they would want back feedback from teachers that are using their solution but it does not seem to be the case.

We have used other solutions in the past, the school district switched us to Google Classroom. The assigning of unique copies is definitely something that draws teachers to Google Classroom and will continue to draw teachers to Google Classroom. However, now there are other platforms that can tap into the fact that you can assign a unique copy to students through their platform as long as the Google email is attached to it. It's not as unique anymore and there are other learning management systems that do it better.

The hard part of the initial setup is that you have to set up multiple classes for each subject area when you essentially see a student all the time. For example, one student, in fourth grade would have four or five different classes that they need to click into. This aspect of the Google Classroom is fine. However, it's when you are in quarter one and you want all of quarter one's grades together, but you don't want quarter two's grades to go into it. You have to make a new class, have all of your students have to add that class to keep the other class open to allow you to receive the grades from quarter one and still operate quarter two at the same time. It gets confusing for students.

My advice to others is to make sure that you organize correctly. You're going to have to spend a large portion of time organizing and making sure that students know exactly how to use the solution. Set very clear instructions around how you are going to assign work, and how they are going to turn work back in and provide feedback. Those things need to be said ahead of time if Google is not going to fix their permissions.

I rate Google Classroom a seven out of ten.

If you're going to use Google Classroom for creating and giving out unique copies and that's the only use you have for it, then I would rate it as a ten out of ten. If you're going to use it as a learning management system, I would give it a five.  
I kind of split the difference between those two ratings to give it a seven, only because I don't think it does the learning management system well, but it does do unique copies well. There is a need to set parameters around it.

If you're only looking at it from the standpoint of assigning a unique copy to students and giving out information, then Google Classroom is the best. It's the fastest and the easiest way to do it. If you're looking for a learning management system and giving out that unique copy, there are other vendors that are doing it better.

We used the product at our university to facilitate digital learning.

Google Classroom is simple to use. Its most valuable feature is the ability to conduct test and quiz programs.

The product's UI needs improvement. At present, it requires specific knowledge to get familiar with the platform.

I have been using Google Classroom for a year.

The system crashes sometimes. I rate its stability an eight out of ten.

Google Classroom has good scalability. Our university has approximately 1500 to 2000 users.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It took around 15 to 20 minutes to complete.

We can implement the product ourselves.

The product offers a yearly based license.

I rate Google Classroom a seven out of ten. I would not recommend it to others as many other better tools are available.