It’s the start of a new school term and Google has a few nice surprises for teachers using Google Classroom. It’s apps all round!
Not only has Google released Classroom apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android, but the web interface has also received a big update. Since it launched 6 months ago students have submitted more than 30 million assignments through Google Classroom despite criticisms that the web app was missing a lot of features. But fear not! Google is on the case with a plethora of new year updates.
Google Classroom app for iPad and Android
The new mobile apps allow students to snap a photo on their phone or tablet and submit it as part of an assignment. It also allows them to share content from other apps — like PDFs, Word documents, and screenshots — and upload them to Classroom. And for those with a limited data plan the Google Classroom app also allows students to work offline.
Google recommends that teachers using the Classroom app also have the Google Docs, Drive and Slides apps installed. And if you’re a teacher the app also gives full access to submitted assignments through Google Drive so you can give feedback or mark work on the go.
Teacher Assignments Overview Page
For teachers Google also has a big update in store. One of the problems with Google Classroom was that in order to mark an assignment a teacher would have to trawl through their classes’s stream in order to find what they wanted. But with today’s update to Classroom for the web, teachers can now find all of their set assignments on a single page and quickly see who has and hasn’t submitted work.
To access the assignments page click menu and then Assignments.
Archive Classes
Of course, classes don’t go on forever, so Google has introduced a feature that allows you to archive inactive classes. Archived classes can still be accessed by students and teachers but they don’t appear on the main page and are set to read-only so new content cannot be added.
It’s great to see Google continuing to provide support for Google Classroom. Many teachers will find these updates extremely useful and allow students to start using mobile devices constructively in lessons with Classroom. Once we get the ability to allow mulitiple teachers to manage a class and I’ll be a happy man!
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