Creating a Google Community to use as a Discussion Board for Students

 I had a French teacher come to me looking for a solution last week.  She wanted to use a discussion board like the wall on Facebook.  She would like her students to be able to reply to comments  that she makes and then have the ability to reply back to students.  She would also like for her students to receive a notification when a reply is posted to a comment that a student has posted.  A closed group in Facebook would be an easy solution, but the district that I work for blocks Facebook.  She has used Edmodo in the past too, but now the district is also blocking student access to Edmodo. (I'll save the blocking of tools and resources from students for another post.)  So, I searched for other online discussion boards and found some options and then thought of Google.  A Google Community will work for her and provide a discussion environment for her students.  It will allow her to establish a group and for students to be identified throughout the online discussion.

A teacher can create a Google Community within Google+. Privacy levels can be set so that only members of the Community can see the content and notifications can be turned on when posts or comments are added to the discussion.

Students will need to create a Google account if they do not already have one.  Since we are at the high school level, students meet the 13 year old age requirement that Google has in place for creating an account.

To set up a Google Community follow the directions below. (*Note the instructions are based on the "new" google+ layout not the classic.)

Download the instructions below.

creating_a_google_community.pdf
File Size:	1592 kb
File Type:	pdf

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