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Changes Coming to Google Classroom
posted by: Melissa | August 09, 2018, 08:30 PM   

Just in time for the new school year, Google’s rolling out a host of improvements and additions to its Google Classroom software. Cumulatively, the changes are a major redesign to the software that has become so ubiquitous in many schools that it even allowed one South Carolina school district to put an end to snow days.


The most substantial improvement is the new classwork page. The page is designed to be the hub for teacher-student communication. The new page makes it easier for teachers to organize and reuse their materials and improves collaboration with other teachers and classes.


Among the enhancements and improvements is a new grading tool. The new tool still works with Google Docs files, but it has added support for Microsoft Office files, PDFs, videos and more. It also allows teachers to create a ‘comment bank’ so that they can provide feedback more easily with commonly used comments. Finally, the new grading tool can toggle between files and submissions while grading, thus speeding up the process.


Google Form quizzes are also getting additional improvements. Teachers now have the ability to put a quiz in a ‘locked’ mode to help students avoid distractions.


There’s also a general improvement to Google Docs itself. Although popular with schools, businesses and individuals, it’s had limited formatting capabilities. The new update has increased Doc’s formatting capabilities, including margins and indentations so students can more easily use MLA-style citations.


Finally, there are numerous small changes designed to make lessons more engaging. For example, there are 30 new lessons designed to be used with Google Earth and their Science Journal website is getting new content. They’ve also added compatibility between their Tour Creator and their Cardboard Camera apps, which should provide for some pretty engaging lessons.


To help teachers learn all these features, Google has created new, more extensive training materials that are easily accessible on their website. Check out all the new changes today!


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