Google announces Classroom, an exciting new tool for teachers to organise assignments online and allow students to submit work.
Google Apps is great for sharing documents with students, but until now there hasn’t been an easy way for teachers to organise lessons within Google’s suite of apps.
To remedy this Google has announced Classroom. Like Moodle and Blackboard, Google Classroom lets teachers organise assignments into lessons online and allows students to submit completed assignments for marking.
Being a Google product, Classroom is completely embedded into Google Apps and can pull documents, images, and video from Google Drive.
Classroom dispenses with the complex management and configuration of Moodle, and the frustrating navigation of Blackboard, instead providing a simple, clean interface designed to engage students. And, when it’s made available this September, Classroom will be as simple to turn on as clicking a button.
You can register to preview Google Classroom today, but Google promises that all schools using Google Apps for Education will have free access to the new app this September.
We’ll have an in-depth guide into Classroom once we have access in the next few weeks. Check out the new features by signing up for a free Google Apps trial.
Feature set still seems pretty limited.Is this another OpenClass where it really won’t go anywhere for the next few years? I’d like to see some significant development before going all in. Add quizzes and automatic grading and then it’s moving in the right direction.
Hi David,
I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on Classroom, but I appreciate that it’s probably not going to be “teacher ready” in the short term. If anyone can do it though, I’d put my money on Google — might just take a year to become feature rich enough to cover all requirements.
Do you have access yet? Is it meeting your expectations?
Karl
We have been a Moodle District for many years. Is there a comparison available between Moodle and Classroom? I just received access to classroom yesterday. So, I’m still “playing”. Where might I find the indepth guide to Classroom as mentioned in the article?
Hi Trent,
Moodle and Google Classroom overlap in some ways, but Moodle is far more mature at the present time. The advantage of Classroom is that it’s built in to Google Apps and is going to have Google’s support and long term development. If you’re currently using Moodle, Classroom isn’t going to replace it in the near future, but there are some compelling features that are worth looking at.
A Google Classroom guide is currently in the works. As soon as it’s available I’ll let you know!
Karl
Hi Karl,
do you know if any institutions started to merge or integrate moodle and google classroom?
Hi,
Not as far as I’m aware. Still very early days for classroom.