New for Google Classroom: Share to Classroom

Have you ever just wished you could quickly get your students all on the same webpage at the same time without wasting time sending them links or writing lengthy URLs on the board?  Then Google Classroom has a new extension for you!  Share to Classroom is a new extension that allows teachers to push a website directly to our students' screens.  Both teachers and students will need to add this extension to their Chrome browser in order to take advantage of all of its functionality.  Simply go to the Chrome Webstore and search "Share to Classroom."

Once you have this extension installed on your device and on your students' devices, you can simply copy and paste a link using the Share to classroom button which will be located to the right of your address bar.  You will choose which class from your list of Google Classrooms that you wish to push this website out to.  If your students are logged in and are using Google Chrome, the website will pop up immediately in their browser.  There will be ooohs and aaahs when this happens. In the picture, I am sending my students to a website about the Day of the Dead.

Another possible use for this extension is to push a quiz or Google form to students at the beginning of class.  Oftentimes, I post things on my Google Classroom stream before class begins that I would rather students not have access to until they are actually in my classroom.  The Share to Classroom extension is a more practical way to make sure that students are only seeing the information when you want them to see the information.  If a student is absent or if some of your students aren't using Chrome at the time, they can click on the Share to Classroom button at a later time to see which websites have been sent to them from their teachers.

Finally, if a student wishes to send you, the teacher, a website, they can use Share to Classroom to do this as well.  These two functions (pushing links to students and receiving links from students) do not get added to your Google Classroom stream which is nice because if you're like me, your stream is already filled with announcements, questions, comments and assignments.

This is a handy tool to use when you don't want to clutter up your Google Classroom stream with links to websites that aren't tied to a particular assignment or announcement.  If you are simply looking to have students on the same page (literally) during class, this can be a very quick way to make that happen.