Last month Google began allowing anyone who has a Gmail address to join Google Classroom classrooms. This week that option was extended to allow anyone who has a Gmail address to create his or her own Google Classroom online classroom.

Teachers who are already using Google Classroom within a G Suite for Education account already know how to create a new classroom. For people who have been waiting to try it, here’s what you need to do:

1. Sign-in with your personal Gmail account at classroom.google.com.
2. Click “+” in the upper, right corner of the screen and choose “create a class.”
3. Complete the required basic information about your class (title, section, topic).
4. Invite people to join your classroom. To do this select “students” while viewing your classroom. In the “students” section you will find a classroom invitation code that you can distribute. Alternatively, you can invite people to join by sending emails directly from your Google Classroom account.

Applications for Education
There are plenty of online course tools that are more robust than Google Classroom. However, the really good ones are not free. That said, Google Classroom is adequate for many online courses and as a supplement to in-person classes. Now that Google Classroom is open to the world, we could see all kinds of new courses popping-up on the web. We could see high school students creating courses to teach others about hobbies. We might see teachers using it to create professional development courses.

How to effectively use Google Classroom and all elements of G Suite will be covered in my online course Getting Going With G Suite. The course starts next week. Graduate credit is available. Learn more here and register here.