Week 5 Google Classroom and #Gridpals

Stuff for Google Classroom: Now that I have used Google Classroom it is becoming easier to use. I do not fully understand everything, but the more I use it the more comfortable I feel using it. I wish we would have had this guide when we first started using Google Classroom to help answer some of the questions I had, but I guess better late than never. A lot of the information seems pretty straight forward but I like how they suggest using the year as part of the section so if I use this yearly, I can decipher between years and sections that I have already created. Another tip I find helpful is numbering the assignments besides just labeling them so as the year goes on and assignments start piling up I can keep track of the assignments. I feel it would be easier to use if we had more time with the tool and actually had interactions between student and teacher to fully see all the benefits of Google Classroom.

GridPals: After reviewing the GridPals portion of the week 5 resources I found it interesting, so I decided to fill out the rest of my profile to see how it works. I am active and awaiting a GRidPal, but I am hesitant to reach out and make a connection on my own. There are a lot of educators across the United States and Canada and there are many Physical Education/Health educators on GridPals. I feel this could be beneficial to my career and this could increase my PLN the same way Twitter can. To be in contact with someone across the United States and share ideas with them instantly is pretty remarkable, plus it is more of a one on one interaction than trying to skim through the Twitter posts to find something that is interesting. I guess there will be many platforms to interact with all different types of educators and I will have to figure out which platforms suits my needs the best.