The learning technology I decided to explore and parse for affordances is that of Google Classroom. 

According to Google Classroom’s site, Google Classroom is a teacher’s mission control for class.  Google Classroom allows teachers to create classes, distribute assignments, send feedback, and see everything in one place.

Because of the beneficial convenience factor of Google Classroom, teachers may distribute assignments and push out different links to students. Because teachers may distribute assignments to the class, the teacher can then differentiate the assignments and resources to best meet a student’s learning style as well as meet their individual learning needs. This meets the affordance #7, of differentiated learning. 

Another affordance I saw was that of ubiitqious learning. Students may have access to the resources and information at any time, school or home, since the platform is online.  Therefore, learning takes place outside of the classroom, as well as inside of the classroom. 

Another affordance that stood out to me immediately was that of collaborative intelligence. Another incredible benefit of Classroom is its ability to allow teachers to communicate directly with students in a real-time activity stream. For instance, “Teachers can pose a question at the beginning of class, post videos for the students to watch, or share anything else important to the class,”(Google Classroom, 2016). All students have the opportunity to share their own thoughts, view their peers thoughts, and collaborate with each other to really have that peer to peer learning and interaction. 

The last affordance that stood out to me was that of Recursive Feedback. Not only can feedback be given through peer to peer interaction and feedback, but teachers can send individual feedback to students on assignments. The feedback doesn’t have to be only teacher to student, but can also be peer to peer and self reflection as well. 

While there may be other affordances, these were the one’s that immediately stood out to me while investigating.

Do you all see any more that you think would be associated with the use of Google Classroom?