Creating A Google Classroom For Our Library! Step 2...Adding A Welcome Message To The Stream.

One of my big summer projects for our school library is creating a new Google Classroom that will serve as a one-stop for our students, teachers and families.  I will still have a library Google website but I will be using our Google Classroom as a place to find all things about our library including Destiny Discover, the state online resources, book and eBook collections, special library events, technology we use, monthly and themed choice boards, research help and so much more. 

In a new series of blog posts, I will share the steps I used in setting up a Google Classroom for our library.

In the first blog post, I shared how to set up a new Google Classroom. You will find this blog post here.

Today, I am going to share how I will use the Stream to share messages, news and information with our patrons. 

The first thing I did was go back to the Future Ready Librarian podcast I did with my friend Karina Quilantan-Garza (@cuethelibrarian) last year. 

In the podcast, Planning for Patrons and Programs, Karina shared tips and tricks on how she set up a library help desk in Google Classroom. You can listen to the podcast here.  

I asked her a few questions after our podcast which helped me wrap my head around how I wanted to set up and use this Google Classroom for our library in a different way than I have in the past. As I shared in the first post, I have used Google Classrooms for different library things the last several years, but now I want to use it as that one-stop shop. 

So, to start...the Stream will be that place to share messages, news and information. For example, I can share book fair details; special author, illustrator and expert visits; summer reading activities; monthly choice boards; and even more.  

To get Our Library Google Classroom ready to go in the fall, I added a message under Stream this morning.  This is the first thing all students, teachers and families will see when they login. 

My first message is set and next I will be ready to start adding categories and information to our Google Classroom. 

I can't wait to hear about the Google Classrooms you are setting up for your libraries too!