Technology Pursuit

Blending Technology Into the Language Arts Classroom

Personalize Your Banners for Google Classroom

I’ve waited for this day to arrive–the day when I get to choose my own banner from a photograph of my choosing rather than the selection Google provides.

As soon as I arrived home tonight, I reset two of my three classroom banners.  Here are the results:

Expository Writing ClssrmBritish Literature Banner

 

Obviously, the cool thing is getting to personalize your own banners.  Possibilities include

  1. Adding an image to represent the current unit (as I did with Macbeth)
  2. Adding photos taken from classtime of the students
  3. Using photos of the top-notch visual work of students (posters, drawings, etc.)
  4. Allowing students to choose a “banner of the week” as a reward

But the change has come with some not-so-cool things…

  1. When choosing an image, remember that your class name will appear in the middle of it (and your picture will show up on the student side), so it’s important to choose a background that will not obscure the name of the class or look strange if your pic is thrown in.  If I had my way, I’d like the option to get rid of the class name (and pic) entirely.
  2. Images do need to be at least 800 pixels by 200 pixels.  Larger isn’t a problem; you’ll be prompted to crop within Google Classroom.

 

12 Comments

  1. Hi Melissa, I’m a Spanish teacher, fairly new to Classroom. I have customised some banners for my classes, however I find that google Classroom puts a dark overlay on top of them and the result is very poor, too dark. I’ve looked around and haven’t found any mention to this problem. Could you please confirm if this is something that happens to everyone, or something to do with the implementation of Classroom at my centre? Thanks in advance, and thanks for sharing.

  2. I have the same problem!

  3. Same problem… And have spent too many hours trying to figure this one out. It could be, Google wants us to only use the images they have uploaded for us to use?

  4. No solution to this huh? Th dark overlay?

  5. me too!! I thought I could find special images but I haven´t find any!

  6. Michelle Ashford

    August 20, 2020 at 11:15 pm

    It dims due to ADA requirements.

  7. Is there a resource of banner-sized images to be shared?

  8. You can remove this banner but I am having a problem with it switching back to the dark overlay periodically. (if anyone knows how to fix this please let me know!)

    How to remove dark overlay: Right-click on the image in Classroom, Select INSPECT. Go down to the bottom, under “Styles” there is a line that says “background color”. Uncheck that box and it will get rid of the dark overlay.

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