I've been recently looking at Google Classroom. It seems to offer a lot of free resources to set up an on-line classroom. I watched a couple of youtube tutorials for teachers wanting to learn how it works.

I'm hoping there is someone with actual experience because I would like to hear positive or negative opinions about it.

Did you try it, Mike?

I've been trying it out for the past few months and here are the problems that I have encountered so far:

Students don't check their emails, students forget their passwords, students don't have computers at home, the school computer lab is always busy, Student change their use names and you don't know which student submitted work, etc....


If you use Google Forms for assignments, you are pretty much limited to multiple choice answers, as the other answer formats have some limitations (I teach Science and don't penalize students for spelling, Google Forms quizzes only accept correct spelling.)

On the plus side, you can link to videos, give them copies of late assignments, post copies of you powerpoint presentations, send messages to students who haven't turned in work, etc...

I was using it with my P5 students and I found that they really weren't ready for it. I will try M1,2 & 3 after the NY break and will see if they respond better.

Have you tried an LMS like Edmodo?
It is more teacher friendly than google but it won't fix the infrastructure problems (busy labs, no computer at home, etc).
It has the look and feel of facebook and gives you better control of the class than google.