Google Classroom to Share Privately

I was asked this question

Looking for a suggestion… A music teacher wants for all our elementary music teachers to be able to video 30-60 seconds of a class and for the rest of the department to view the videos… Not for public, but for idea sharing within the department… Any suggestions for a place to post them that would look nice but also be easy to access?

Use Google Classroom

When you use Google Classroom for on campus sharing you are essentially creating a website for the group without the effort.

Save to Drive

Save any photos or videos to Google Drive. By default these will be private unless you put them in a folder with sharing permissions.

Assuming these photos and videos contain students and should not be publicly shared Drive is a safe place to house these items.

Sharing Permissions

It can be tricky to ensure anything you share with a group has the proper sharing permissions. However, Google Classroom does this for you automatically.

Create a Google Classroom class and invite the teachers and staff members to be a student in the class.

Anything added to this Google Classroom class will be implicitly shared with the Classroom participants. And ONLY the participants.

The Stream

The Stream in Google Classroom will act as a board to show current announcements and activity. When videos and pictures of students are posted from the student musical events the participants in the class can post comments of praise, similar to Facebook, but without risking the privacy of students.

Classwork Page

Use the Create button to add a MATERIAL to the Google Classroom class. Unless you have a need to collect information from the class participants you can skip using “Assignment.”

Create Topics

Google Classroom is designed to be organized by topics. Consider making a topic per musical event or by type of event. This will allow class participants to easily find past pictures and videos in an organized topical format… Just like a website.

Assign Events

Maybe you do want to make assignments. To announce an upcoming musical event that staff can attend use the Create button on the Classwork page to make an assignment with the event information. This would allow class participants to indicate if they are going or ask a question.

Poll the Class

By using Google Classroom instead of a webpage you can make the sharing of information more interactive. On the Classwork page click on Create to ask a “Question.” You can ask short answer or multiple choice to solicit interactivity and participation from the class participants.

Push Notifications

Skip emailing staff about upcoming events. Use the Stream or Classwork page to post the events. Classroom will push an email notification but allow participants to easily find the information even if the email gets buried or lost.