March 31, 2020

https://doi.org/10.23999/j.dtomp.2020.3.1

J Diagn Treat Oral Maxillofac Pathol 2020;4:51−2.

Under a Creative Commons license

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

Tymofieiev OO, Ushko NO, Yarifa MO. Сovid-2019 response: virtual educational process at the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery using Google Classroom. J Diagn Treat Oral Maxillofac Pathol 2020;4(3):51–2.

Article

You don’t make the timeline; the virus makes the timeline.¹

–Anthony Fauci

US top infectious-diseases expert 

March 25, 2020

 

Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19)² pandemic led to the severe restrictions around the globe due the extremely rapid spread of the virus and total death number 21,297 people on March 26.³ Quarantine measures of the Ukrainian Government became very similar to actions of the other countries. One of which, a closed educational institutions from March 12,⁴ created a need to continue education virtually using cutting-edge technologies such as Google Classroom and Google Meet.

 

Google Classroom, a free web service, was released by the Google LLC in August 2014. “Classroom was created hand-in-hand with teachers to help organize day-to-day tasks, communication, and foster greater collaboration,” this is how Google describes the purpose of Classroom`s creation.⁵

 

Year by year evolution of the Classroom gave its users in 2020 a wide range of tools: Simultaneous usage with Google Docs, Gmail, Google Drive, Sheets and Slides, and even Google Calendar.

 

A special training course for professors of our university facilitated the effective usage of the Classroom during the quarantine period implementing the e-learning at our Department. A 256 page book “Teaching with Google Classroom,” written by Michael Zhang, a certified trainer for Google Apps for Education, gave a deep look on all possibilities of this global e-learning service.⁶

 

Google Classroom was also launched as a smartphone application in January 2015. Despite of some limitations, at the mobiles we can: 1) create or join a class, 2) make announcements and post comments to assignments, 3) send e-mails to students, 4) access your class’s Google Drive, 5) view whether the students have completed assignments or not, 6) reset or disable your class code.⁷

 

Thus, using all potential of such e-learning services, as Google Classroom, we can effectively deal with a “physical learning” crisis, allowing the students at “surgical dentistry” and “pediatric surgical dentistry” classes to avoid the risk for their lives and to master the curriculum during the pandemic when the timeline is making only by the virus.

 

REFERENCES (7)

1. ‘You don’t make the timeline; the virus makes the timeline,’ says dr. Anthony Fauci [document on the internet]; March 26, 2020 [cited 2020 Mar 27]. Available from: Link

2. WHO. Novel Coronavirus – China [document on the internet]; January 12, 2020 [cited 2020 Mar 25]. Available from: Link

3. Number of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths worldwide as of March 25, 2020, by country [document on the internet]; March 26, 2020 [cited 2020 Mar 26]. Available from: Link

4. Ukraine has imposed quarantine amid coronavirus outbreak [document on the internet]; March 12, 2020 [cited 2020 Mar 19]. Available from: Link

5. Classroom [document on the internet]; March 12, 2020 [cited 2020 Mar 20]. Available from: Link

6. Zhang M. Teaching with Google Classroom. 1st ed. Birmingham: Packt Publishing; 2016.

7. Cains JT. How to use the Google Classroom mobile app [document on the internet]; [cited 2020 Mar 21]. Available from: Link