Google Classroom vs. Schoolmint Hero

- During the pandemic, the college needs a fast and easy solution to conduct Google Classroom. The integration with Google Accounts and Google Meet allows the university to run and access the Classroom on a large scale. - The teacher wants to conduct some exams in third-party software like Moodle. But we have not found any plugin for this famous open-source learning platform. The exam system in Google Classroom is so poor that it doesn't even fully screen the test when students are writing their exams.

I would highly recommend this as long as you are able to get 90% or more buy-in. However, if there is not a MAJORITY buy-in I don't feel it will be successful. My colleagues and I found that classroom management was much improved in the classrooms of us who were sold on using it and used it with fidelity, adding extra intensives because of infidelity in other classrooms. It became obvious to the administration that the lack of buy-in was destroying the program outcome.

Incentivized

• Student-teacher communication - I love using Classroom for this because my students can always go back and check what was on Classroom by looking through the stream. This way they don't have to go dig through emails to find what they're looking for.
• Posting to multiple classes - I can post the same announcement or assignment to multiple classes at once without having to repeat the process or send separate emails.
• Streamlining grading - when students turn work in on Classroom, it all goes to one place and then when I'm grading I can open their documents directly from Classroom or my Drive folder. This way, I'm not looking through emails and Google Doc shared files for their assignment.

Incentivized

• Tracking tardy behavior quickly across settings.
• Tracking positive behaviors.
• Intentionally rewarding positive behaviors immediately for all students.
• Quickly alerting alarming behaviors.
• Allowing for all students to be successful throughout the day across all settings.
• Allows all staff to reward all students for exhibiting positive behaviors.

Incentivized

• Although usually in the discussion with other LMS apps such as Schoology and Canvas, Google Classroom doesn't possess as in-depth of a platform. There is no ability to set individual learning paths, pace student work with completion settings, or embed other apps directly into teacher-created assignments.
• The assignment creation options are limited. Teachers can only choose from creating an assignment (usually a link with directions), a material (usually a doc/slide/website, etc), a question, and a quiz.
• With gamification taking on a new lens in education, there really isn't any way to use gamification elements with Google Classroom. There isn't any way to create Individual learning paths, or use badges and micro-credentials within Classroom. Outside programs would have to be used.

Incentivized

• Students need to have direct online access to picking their prizes based on the points they've earned. It will give more focus on doing what's right.
• Teachers need to have the ability to create their own positive rewards in the system based on their subject area.
• Is there a way to have the system remember your username so you don't have to type it out every time you sign in?

Incentivized

Testing is particularly important in online learning, and Google Classroom falls far short of other learning management systems in this regard. Security is also a concern: while account control is reasonable for the account used with Google Classroom, the person controlling a particular account is often able to, for example, forward or download proprietary materials.

It is a great product

This is only a product I would recommend to a humanities teacher. Math and science teachers cannot use this product the same way that I can as an English teacher. It is great for word process and for reading, but unable to handle the demands of math and science. Therefore, I would highly recommend this product to English or Social Studies teachers, but NOT math or science teachers

Incentivized

again. for the day to day usage, adding points is a bit of a chore but I keep doing it because the students respond

Incentivized

We have had very little trouble in accessing Google Classroom. Our issues, if any, have risen from our server and not the Google servers.

Incentivized

Since this platform is provided by Google, the technical support is better than any others, and we are not required to bother about the space constraints for adding the contents. If we have a good uninterrupted internet facility we can access Google Classroom without any delay or lag. They have app support in both Android and iPhone.

Someone is always available. I like being able to call, chat, or email as needed. There are also a lot of tutorials and webinars provided. Hero does a good job of providing tools for onboarding new users and customers as well. It is easy to find whatever information you are looking for.

Incentivized

It was relatively easy to implement due to the simplicity of the platform. Even our more technology challenged teachers found it easy to get started with Google Classroom.

Incentivized

Skyward and Google Classroom are completely different programs that are used for completely different things. The only comparable areas are communication with students. Skyward does so through the class rosters and message center and Google Classroom does so through the classrooms for each student and their teacher, but each is unique in their own way.

Incentivized

We have used Class Dojo and Progress Book. Hero is great for discipline specifically. We also have e-school, but it does not allow the level of detail and follow up that Hero has. Before Hero, we had a really ineffective system for tracking student discipline, and it was hard to be consistent.

Incentivized

It is very easy to push out this program across our buildings. Teachers are able to use it without much trouble.

Incentivized

• Students are able to continue learning in a remote environment
• Parents have a single, consistent organization structure to make it easy to track assignments and progress for multiple children
• Much better solution than the quickly assembled Zoom-and-gloom of the previous spring when school abruptly went remote with no planning

Incentivized

• Definitely worth the money. The kids are happy, they're using the program as often as they can, and they appreciate the opportunity to be rewarded for their good behavior.
• We've been able to sustain a store, and that's super awesome. I know we wouldn't be able to without the help of Hero and the ways in which we keep the hype.
• I think I need more help with teacher adoption. We have a lot of initiatives at our school, so we're trying to take on a little more than we can chew at this point. We're getting there though!