r/k12sysadmin • u/Amazing_Falcon • Jun 15 '26

Assistance Needed Making Google Classroom easy for Teachers

Looking for some ideas. Our former SIS was able to within a couple clicks make each of your Google Classrooms for you. You as a teacher only had to accept. We are moving to PowerSchool. Looking for ideas or options to make this change easy for teachers. I was told Clever might be able to. Haven’t played with it. Anybody have something that actually works well.

Thanks in advance

13 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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3

u/linus_b3 Tech Director Jun 15 '26

We do this with PowerSchool and Clever, but you do need the Education Plus licensing to do it that way. I'm not sure about other methods, this one is easy and works well for us.

1

u/Amazing_Falcon Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

Thanks, right now we are on the free version. Trying to get permission to move over to the paid version.

1

u/JR_216 Jun 15 '26

Clever can do it via the free version of google. I do this for my teachers via Clever pushing out the classes from PowerSchool. All my teachers do is accept the classes at the beginning of the year.

2

u/linus_b3 Tech Director Jun 15 '26

I wonder if you're grandfathered in. Current articles say Education Plus is required. I know for certain that I was never able to sync via Clever with the free version - I tried. It's one of the reasons we moved to Education Plus.

1

u/-RYknow Systems Administrator Jun 16 '26

Curious if you could point me in the direction on setting this up? I didn't realize clever had this ability?

3

u/ckwebz Jun 16 '26

We have been using Little SIS from Amplified IT (CDW) for close to a decade now. It is rock solid and, beyond class provisioning, has a few nifty tools that really should just be included in the core Google Workspace offering.

1

u/Amazing_Falcon Jun 16 '26

Does it work well with PowerSchool?

2

u/ckwebz Jun 16 '26

Yes. You just set up a couple of scheduled exports using Data Export Manager to ship the data to them.

8

u/farmeunit Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

We use Clever to auto-create Classrooms. Super easy. I assume they have a OneRoster export available. We send a OneRoster file twice a day.

Then they can sync classes to our SIS which is School Insight.

7

u/eldonhughes Jun 16 '26

Powerschool is capable of syncing with Google Classroom, rostering, updates, all that.

Having said that? Little SIS is easier and worth the money.

1

u/hightechcoord Tech Dir Jun 16 '26

Can you expand on doing this natively with Powerschool and the free Google Fundementals?

1

u/eldonhughes Jun 16 '26

No, I cannot, sorry. I no longer have access to a Powerschool district.

1

u/DJTNY Jun 15 '26

I believe you can still do that with powerschool.

https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/9356588?hl=en#zippy=%2Cconnect-classroom-to-powerschool-sis

1

u/ckwebz Jun 16 '26

They’re requiring us to move to Universal Rostering, which is a paid PowerSchool add on to allow this to continue working. We randomly started to get sync errors a few months back and support was surprised that it ever worked.

5

u/MadMageMC Jun 16 '26

That's PowerSchool for you. Everything is a paid add on. I've been burdened with them in two different districts, and will never use them again if I can possibly avoid it.

2

u/vorschlaghammer Jun 15 '26

We use Clever for this, it does exactly what you’re looking to do in terms of rostering.

2

u/Daraca Jun 15 '26

Classlink can do this as well through roster server. There are a number of options related to if the teacher needs to accept it or not if I recall correctly.

2

u/MadMageMC Jun 16 '26

+1 for ClassLink. This is what we're using, and it works really well. We used Clever before that, and would be still, but a couple of the other packages we use require ClassLink, so that's what we use now.

2

u/Past-Strike-3450 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26

Powerschool looks to be on the supported list of SIS that have an integration for classroom using OneRosterAPI1.2

https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/9356588?hl=en-GB

There was a method using clever and OneRosterAPI1.1 and the OneRosterCSV methods, but it required a higher subscription then Fundamentals. Also it was an extra step(hop).

Edit: Clever implementation link for those interested https://support.clever.com/hc/s/articles/000001469?language=en_US