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Speaking of my Loft Class...
Sep. 20th, 2021 01:03 pm For reasons known only to the Loft (probably cost saving,) they host the back end portion of their Zoom classes on Google Classroom. I find Google Classroom to be somewhat opaque and annoying, but what has me stressed this morning is a problem that came down late last night.
I got a panicked email from a student who had been diligently working away on an assignment in Google Docs. As she herself said, she is very familiar with Docs and how it works and so she didn't bother saving it... because Google Docs does that for you. Even so, she had noticed it doing its usual "...saving" thing. Right, so, she put in all her work on the assignment (a critique of another student's work) and closed up. Having had a secondary thought after that, she went to add it... and no longer seemed to have access to the document she was working on. She couldn't, in fact, find it AT ALL.
This stymied me for a long time until I remembered that the way I create assignments is that I upload the critique piece into the shared Google Classroom Folder and then send it out to each student by having Google Classroom's mechanism create a copy for each student. I thought, "Ah, my student doesn't realize that her work is being stored in the shared classroom folder and not on her personal Google Docs. I'll just go find it for her and point her to how to retrieve it."
EXCEPT.
When I went to open up the Classroom's Google Folder, I found myself barred. At least on the instructor's end, I got a message that said, "This folder has been moved to trash. To access files, have the owner of the folder restore it." I was initially like... WHO THE HELL IS THE OWNER, IF NOT ME?? Turns out, the answer is: a Loft staff member who no longer works at the Loft.
I wrote a very panicked email myself now, to the Loft, begging them to have that former employee restore the folder and for god's sake NOT TO DELETE THEIR ACCOUNT because it would end my access to probably everything that's on the cloud as well, since they are the owner of it all, not me.
I woke up to a reply from someone who is supposed to be out of the office until tomorrow, so apparently I write panic very well. They didn't quite understand my problem because I don't think that other instructors use assignments the way I do. I like to protect the anonymity of my students wherever possible and Classroom can send out copies to everyone without me having to generate an email (which I would still bcc everyone one, but you know, it's another layer for people who want/need that sort of thing.) But, obviously, there are work arounds if they can't restore the folder to us. It doesn't seem to affect any documents that I have stored on my own Docs, so no class materials generated by me are affected. The only thing we wouldn't be able to do is use Classroom to generate assignments.
It's probably never come up before because I suspect most Loft teachers don't even use Classroom, much less do a deep dive like I do into all the functionalities. I guess this if only because the Loft is forever sending very simple "how-to"s on what Google Classroom EVEN IS whenever I say, yes, please, I would like a Classroom set-up for me. I do wish they'd let us do it ourselves, but we also have to use their Zoom license, and I guess the point is to teach through them, after all, and not just GO ROGUE which is what I'd honestly like to do.
At any rate, the Loft is, at least, working to have it restored, one way or the other. I am hoping they can transfer ownership to someone who is not the FORMER employee, but honestly if that person could just keep it out of their trash until Nov. 3 when the class is over is really all I need.
So, that's been MY MONDAY! How's by you?
I got a panicked email from a student who had been diligently working away on an assignment in Google Docs. As she herself said, she is very familiar with Docs and how it works and so she didn't bother saving it... because Google Docs does that for you. Even so, she had noticed it doing its usual "...saving" thing. Right, so, she put in all her work on the assignment (a critique of another student's work) and closed up. Having had a secondary thought after that, she went to add it... and no longer seemed to have access to the document she was working on. She couldn't, in fact, find it AT ALL.
This stymied me for a long time until I remembered that the way I create assignments is that I upload the critique piece into the shared Google Classroom Folder and then send it out to each student by having Google Classroom's mechanism create a copy for each student. I thought, "Ah, my student doesn't realize that her work is being stored in the shared classroom folder and not on her personal Google Docs. I'll just go find it for her and point her to how to retrieve it."
EXCEPT.
When I went to open up the Classroom's Google Folder, I found myself barred. At least on the instructor's end, I got a message that said, "This folder has been moved to trash. To access files, have the owner of the folder restore it." I was initially like... WHO THE HELL IS THE OWNER, IF NOT ME?? Turns out, the answer is: a Loft staff member who no longer works at the Loft.
I wrote a very panicked email myself now, to the Loft, begging them to have that former employee restore the folder and for god's sake NOT TO DELETE THEIR ACCOUNT because it would end my access to probably everything that's on the cloud as well, since they are the owner of it all, not me.
I woke up to a reply from someone who is supposed to be out of the office until tomorrow, so apparently I write panic very well. They didn't quite understand my problem because I don't think that other instructors use assignments the way I do. I like to protect the anonymity of my students wherever possible and Classroom can send out copies to everyone without me having to generate an email (which I would still bcc everyone one, but you know, it's another layer for people who want/need that sort of thing.) But, obviously, there are work arounds if they can't restore the folder to us. It doesn't seem to affect any documents that I have stored on my own Docs, so no class materials generated by me are affected. The only thing we wouldn't be able to do is use Classroom to generate assignments.
It's probably never come up before because I suspect most Loft teachers don't even use Classroom, much less do a deep dive like I do into all the functionalities. I guess this if only because the Loft is forever sending very simple "how-to"s on what Google Classroom EVEN IS whenever I say, yes, please, I would like a Classroom set-up for me. I do wish they'd let us do it ourselves, but we also have to use their Zoom license, and I guess the point is to teach through them, after all, and not just GO ROGUE which is what I'd honestly like to do.
At any rate, the Loft is, at least, working to have it restored, one way or the other. I am hoping they can transfer ownership to someone who is not the FORMER employee, but honestly if that person could just keep it out of their trash until Nov. 3 when the class is over is really all I need.
So, that's been MY MONDAY! How's by you?