U006 – Do my students need a BookWidgets account when I use Google Classroom?
When you use Google Classroom to share widgets, BookWidgets will by default automatically create a student account to store the student's information. Students do not need to register a BookWidgets account themselves. You can choose not to use automatically created student accounts, but this will add limitations to the usage of your shared widget.
Working with student accounts
When you share widgets to Google Classroom through the Google Chrome plugin or by using the Send To Google Classroom dialog, your students will be signed in to widgets with their Google accounts. This means they could be prompted with the Google account selection page.
The first time students use their Google account to play a BookWidgets widget, they will also be asked to confirm whether they want to link their Google account to an automatically created BookWidgets account. They will not be asked to provide any extra information, and this account will be free of charge. The confirmation dialog is shown below.
Working without student accounts
In some cases, it is not possible for students to register for a BookWidgets student account, for example when they only have a 'Google Family Link' account. A Google Family Link account can't be used with external services such as ours.
If you can't, or simply don't want to, use Google accounts, or if you don't want your students to automatically link their accounts to a BookWidgets account, you can still share your widgets with your students by requesting a link to your widget (as explained in the Sharing widgets with students tutorial), and inserting this link into Google Classroom manually. However, note that there are several limitations for sharing your widget this way:
- Your widget will not be integrated with the Google Classroom grading or submission system;
- Students are not able to continue working on a widget on a different device. The work a student does in a widget is only stored on the current device;
- Your widgets will not appear in Live widgets;
- When your widget submits results back to you (e.g. Quiz, Crossword, ...), students will be prompted to enter their name themselves. (which is prone to errors, and allows students to impersonate someone else).
If you decide not to work with student accounts, it is also a good idea to have a look at the second section of the following article:
https://kb.bookwidgets.com/article/35-how-do-i-define-students
This article describes best practices for configuring your widgets in order to ensure a proper sending and receiving of widgets and results between your students and yourself.