Learn the Software for HCA@Home

Getting Started
A typical day at HCA@Home
How it works
Google Classroom - Our Virtual Classroom
Google Calendar / Meet - When is class?
Google Workspace - Productivity Tools
Quickschools - Grades & Report Cards
Getting Started

Welcome to HCA@Home. A Google Workspace account has been created for each student at HCA.

  • All HCA@Home classroom communications will be sent to your student’s HCA email account. You can log into their FirstnameLastname@halifaxchristianacademy.ca account at https://mail.google.com
  • All parent correspondence will continue to be sent to the parent/guardian email address in Quickschool.
  • If your student has forgotten their HCA Google Workspace password, please submit a password reset request through this form.
  • With their HCA Google Workspace account, they will have access to the full Google Workspace suite of tools that are used for HCA@Home online learning.

To access HCA@Home

  1. Log into your student’s email account through http://mail.google.com
  2. Your student’s email will have invitations to enroll in their classes through Google Classroom. You can accept the invitation through their Gmail account or log in to http://classroom.google.com and enroll in the classes.
  3. Your student’s email will have invitations to accept calendar events with Google Meet links. You can accept the invitation through their Gmail account or log in to http://calendar.google.com and accept the event invitations.
  4. That’s it! You are all ready to go. Log into Google Classroom for your assignments and materials and log into Google Meet at the event times for your online learning.
A typical day at HCA@Home

This is what a typical day for HCA@Home may look like

  1. An invitation would have been sent out outlining your scheduled classes for the day and different Google Meet video conference links.
  2. Students can start on the assignments or materials scheduled for the day found in Google Classroom.
  3. Attend Google Meet sessions to participate in live classroom education
  4. Complete assignments by submitting the assignments in Google Classroom or marking material as complete in Google Classroom
How it works

HCA leverages Google Workspace Education Suite of productivity tools to provide a vibrant learning environment for our students.

Our core applications are

  • Google Classroom – Our learning management system
  • Google Meet – Live education
  • Loom – On-demand learning

Teachers will send out invitations to your student’s HCA email to enroll in their virtual classrooms. Students must log in to http://classroom.google.com with their HCA Google account and enroll in their classes to receive assignments and materials.

Using Google Calendar and Google Meet, teachers will send out event invitations to your student’s HCA email with video conference links at designated times. The student is required to attend the video conference at the scheduled time to participate.

Assignments, supplementary materials and on-demand recorded lessons are uploaded to Google Classroom per the class schedule along with due dates. Students are expected to submit completed assignments and participate in discussions in Google Classroom classes.

 

Google Classroom - Our Virtual Classroom

Teachers will invite each student to each enrolled subject or course.  Invitations will arrive in your HCA Email Account.

  1. Once they accept these invitations, students will be able to see all their courses by visiting https://classroom.google.com/
  2. This website is where students will find all lesson materials, handouts, links to supplement the lesson, or videos recorded by their teachers for the course.  It is also where homework and quizzes will be assigned by teachers and completed for students.
  3. Google Classroom helps students organize all the individual work they need to do for each course.

Additionally, we have some tutorial videos in our Tips & Tricks section:

Introduction to Google Classroom

If all of this is feeling overwhelming, this tutorial might be helpful.

Please note that it was not created by HCA or Google, but it focuses on using Google Classroom for school from a parent’s perspective.

Also Note: This tutorial mentions you can use Chrome or other browsers to access Google Classroom.  For students in HCA@Home, we need them to please use Chrome only.

Here is another tutorial walk-through from a student’s perspective – again, not specific to HCA@Home:

Guardian email updates

Each student can have one or more Guardian emails attached to their account.  This will automatically generate a weekly email sent directly to the Guardian email address that has a summary of assigned work, anything overdue, and upcoming due dates.

Google Calendar / Meet - When is class?

 

For all “classroom” settings in HCA@Home, all participants will join using Google Meet.

  1. Teachers will schedule the classes and invite the students to each class.  To enter the classroom, go to https://meet.google.com/ . All your scheduled classes for the day will be there.
  2. Once you’re logged in using your HCA Google Account, you’ll see any and all classes scheduled for you to join that day, with a Join button next to each one.
  3. While we want all students to participate fully in their classes, please note that the live classes will be recorded and accessible by everyone enrolled in the class shortly after the Google Meet has finished.  Students are encouraged to take advantage of this if they want to review their lesson.
  4. To learn more: Join a Video Meeting from Hangouts Meet Help.

All students will find their classes and assignments included for them on their Google Calendar, which is accessed from any device at https://calendar.google.com/

Google Workspace - Productivity Tools

Google Workspace Suite includes

Students in HCA@Home will be expected to use their HCA email account as their Google Account to access all of the above while participating in their schoolwork.

  • For those of you who may be more familiar with Office 365 or other similar software: G Suite is a replacement for MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and One Drive; students will not need any productivity software licensed or installed on their computers.
  • All of the G Suite software can be used from within the Google Chrome browser, and/or from free apps that can be installed on your smartphones and mobile devices.
  • The one key thing all students need to know – always use your HCA email account and password to log in to all of the G Suite tools.  This preserves your access to the courses, files, and appointments without confusion.
  • While there is a lot here, this Google’s Documentation on all of this is helpful and thorough, and starts at the very beginning:
Quickschools - Grades & Report Cards

HCA uses QuickSchools for academic records of all our students.  Parents and High School Students can log in here:

 

HCA@Home