Google Classroom has been a surprise hit amongst educators with quite a few schools adopting the platform which manages school work and classes for students and teachers. Today Google has unveiled a new update which aims to simplify things even more.
The updates to Classroom are the biggest yet says Google and are based on feedback from educators and students and offer easier ways for students and teachers to access their schoolwork.
First and foremost is the creation of a new Classwork page. The page allows teachers to group modules and units allowing them to better organise their assignments and questions.
Google is also introducing a new grading tool which works across multiple file-types including Docs Editors, Office files, PDFs, videos files, and more without having to open each individual file. The tool will include a comment bank, allowing teachers to easily save and reuse commonly used feedback, speeding up the grading process.
There’s also now a way for teachers to copy and reuse classwork, allowing them to copy assignments and topics across without starting from scratch. They can also quickly manage students and other teachers with a re-designed People and Settings tool which lets them ‘update class descriptions, display or reset class codes, manage and control how students post on the Stream, and more’.
Teachers who are working in another class can also now turn off all notifications for that class, allowing them to quiet the stream if necessary.
There’s more coming to Classroom as well, with Google saying that teachers will soon be able to add material such as reading material or reference materials to their Classwork page or even add Quizzes while in locked mode, including creating them in Google Forms simplifying the whole process.
Google said they will also automatically create a Classwork page for any classes created before this refresh so keep an eye out for that when it goes live.
