GoogleClassroom
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New Google Classroom feature forces kids to answer questions
As it launched a whole new suite of devices, Google was also updating its tools for educators, Google Classroom. In a blog post, Classroom product manager Lisa Wang outlines a new system to encourage engagement from students in class. Student Selector is, essentially, a way to randomly select kids to answer a question rather than waiting for hands to go into the air.
New Google Classroom features make it harder to cheat
Today, Google announced new features aimed at educators using Google Classroom. These include the ability to assign quizzes through Google Forms and "lock" them, so that students cannot navigate away from the page while the quiz is underway (potentially cutting down on cheating), as well as parental controls to set "off hours" on school-issued devices. The lock mode only applies to "managed" Chromebooks -- devices that the school has full control over.
Google for Education gets a host of updates as the school year starts
Google's Chromebook has been particularly successful in the education market -- and that's helped drive its broader software platform, Google for Education. It's similar to the business offerings Google offers, with access to Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides and so on, but it also adds the specialized Google Classroom tool that helps students and teachers stay in sync. With the school year about to kick off again, Google has a handful of updates ready for its education products that are rolling out today.
Google Classroom helps teachers easily organize assignments, offer feedback
In doing its part to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Day, Google has announced a preview of Classroom: a simple system for course work organization. The free software is nestled inside Google Apps for Education and serves up a quick and easy way to create/organize assignments, give feedback and communicate in real time with students. As you might expect, Classroom leverages Google Docs, Drive and Gmail in order to complete the aforementioned tasks, automatically creating folders in the cloud-based repository for each student when there's a new assignment. "Classroom is based on the principle that educational tools should be simple and easy to use, and is designed to give teachers more time to teach and students more time to learn," writes product manager Zach Yeskel. If you're an educator that's interested if giving it a shot, you can apply to be part of a limited preview. Google plans to release Classroom to any school using is education-minded apps program in September -- just in time for the fall semester.
