Filter the Classwork Page by Topic
The Classwork page in Google Classroom allows you to organize your assignments by topic, but it can get quite long as the school year goes on. One of the downsides to the Classwork page is the inability to see the full assignment title and assignment description without any clicking. The new filter ability in Classroom solves this problem.
Filter
Click on the Classwork page and notice it now shows an ability to filter the topics above the Create button. The default is “All topics.” Click on the filter to select a single topic from the drop down list.
Who Did Work?
A good digital platform should help you to engage more with students, not just put your stuff online. When you filter the topics on the Classwork page they show in their full expanded form. Showing the full directions along with the number of students who completed the assignment. If the “Turned in” number is not zero, CLICK ON THAT NUMBER! Technology allows us to rethink how we run our classrooms. Rather than waiting until everyone has finished, we can interact with students NOW… and that matters. The faster the feedback, the more a student engages in your class.
Class Comments
One thing that drove me nuts about the Google Classroom update was that it was now harder for students to interact through Class comments. Filtering topics fixes this. Now the Class comments are front and center to show that someone has commented on the assignment. You can see who commented and what they commented. The subtle “3 class comments” is not enough information to drive you to interact with the assignment. Seeing an actual question that needs to be addressed does.
Filter Topics
Encourage your students to filter for the current topic. This will allow them a more detailed view of what work they are supposed to complete along with a clear indicator of their assignment status.
The filter is great, but I’m seeing that when I filter, I only see posts that are visible. If a topic has enough posts that older ones get hidden behind “View more”, only those visible posts show up when I filter, AND I haven’t found a way to get to the other posts that were hidden unless I click “View more” BEFORE I filter. If I have to click “View more” first, what’s the point of filtering, because I’m already at the topic. Am I missing something?
I love that the filter is back, but my issue is with topics with lots of post. With these topics, the older posts get hidden behind the “View More’ link. If I use a filter with one of these topics, then all I see are the posts that were not hidden. On top of that, I can’t seem to find a way to show those hidden posts while in the filter. The only way I have found to see them is to have all topics showing, go to the topic in question, click the “View more ” link and then filter, but by that time, what’s the point in filtering. Am I missing something?
Filtering removes view more.