Speed sharing…. Google+ as a classroom discussion board

Richard Kelleher eLearning Co-ordinator Killester College, Springvale, Victoria.

Google Apps for Education free for all schools easy to set up can keep current Exchange server*

Core services in Google Apps have telephone support for administrators. Non-core services do not have support and need to be added.

Google+ needs to be added as an extra Service & it needs to be “turned on” by an administrator.

Users need to set-up a Google+ profile. This cannot be done in the admin console.

Image source: A “walled-garden” or internal school-only instance of Google+ is not possible. If Google+ is turned on for students then they can interact with the rest of the world.

Each user lands on a page where posts by those they follow appear. People and organisations have a page where their own posts are collated.

The power of Google+ lies in the communities - excellent sources of professional development. We advise teachers not to use Google+ like Facebook, but to use their school accounts to develop professional networks.

Google+ recommends communities you may be interested in joining based on the posts you read.

Teachers can set up private communities – students can be invited to join, or can request to join after they have searched for and found the community.

In a private community a teacher can set questions to be answered by individual students, with all students being able to see the answers.

A student can ask a question of the teacher, with all students being able to see the answers. Avoids getting lots of s asking the same thing the night before the test.

A student can ask a question of the teacher, but sometimes other students get in first to answer. In this example two students are discussing how to solve a chem problem.

A student or teacher can post interesting links or other content that students can read and comment on.

So there is no need to regularly check your class. A notification appears when there is a new post to a community

Click! Posts can be read and responded to within any Google session (ie without leaving , for example). Click to expand if post is interesting

Multiple posts can be read without leaving . Click!

Problem #1: profile names. Students (& teachers) can change their profile names. This change propagates through all Google products! Solution = educate users (& ban name changes in your AUP) Harried admin after kids change their names.

Problem #2 – 13+ restriction There is an absolute 13+ age limit for Google+. If Google finds a <13 y.o. account, all Google accounts suspended (and eventually deleted). Solution – Google+ not activated for Yr 7 & 8s. Image source: