by Jatzia Gilzean-Colon

With Woodbridge High School pushing to incorporate technology within the school, teachers from all departments have started to make the switch with a new online tool,  Google Classroom.

According to Mr. Connelly, Vice Principal of Woodbridge High School, he and the central administration had a meeting last April to discuss “the practical application of not only BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), but the Google accounts that were to be provided to the students.” Administrators asked him what departments he would have liked to pilot the exploration of Google Classroom, and chose two out of the few teachers who were assigned, Ms. Martinez and Mr. Semmens, to give lessons to the rest of the staff on September 4th.

As of this year, about a quarter of the teachers in our school are fully committed to Google Classroom, and about half have allowed students to access their Google accounts.

Teachers like Ms. Borna and Ms. Gardner have started to incorporate this new technology and have had some positive responses.

Ms. Gardner, an English teacher, said, “I decided to use Google Classroom because I thought it would be more convenient for the students. I have found that sometimes students don’t have access to printers or ways to get things to their teachers.”

Although she has had some trouble getting kids to log in, and figuring out how to turn in assignments correctly, overall she finds it easy to use and will continue to use it, hopefully expanding upon its capabilities.

Google Classroom has also made its way into the math department with computer science teacher, Ms. Borna. She started using it last semester and finds it very efficient. She said, “Because I am a computer science teacher, a lot of my projects require files that need to be uploaded, and by using Google Classroom, it allowed me to upload the files to the drive so that my students can have access to them at home.” Ms. Borna has become very dependent on this program, especially with her AP classes, and said she plans to continue using it.

Although teachers are slowly adapting to Google Classroom, the administration plans to continue encouraging teachers to get on board. For students, don’t be surprised to see more Google in the classroom next year.