Interaction is probably the most important element between a teacher and a student. Given the fact that our lives are revolving around technology and with the rise of e learning technologies there is a high need for a better collaboration tool for teachers as well as students. Teachers spend a ton of valuable time doing things other than teaching—waking up early to grade quizzes, collecting and returning piles of paper assignments, and battling copy machine paper jams. But with today’s technology it doesn’t have to be this way. Many teachers and professors have found ways to use technology to be better educators and avoid busy work.
Today, in honor of Teacher Appreciation Day, Google announced a preview of Classroom, a new, free tool in the Google Apps for Education suite. The Classroom helps teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease. 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.
Here are some of the awesome features of Classroom:
- Create and collect assignments: Classroom weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly. They can quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback to individual students.
- Improve class communications: Teachers can make announcements, ask questions and comment with students in real time—improving communication inside and outside of class.
- Stay organized: Classroom automatically creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student. Students can easily see what’s due on their Assignments page.
Like the rest of Google Apps for Education services, Classroom contains no ads, never uses content or student data for advertising purposes, and is free for schools.
Starting today, teachers and professors can apply for a preview of Classroom.Based on the requests received, Google will be inviting a limited number of educators to try Classroom in about a month. Classroom will be available to any school using Google Apps for Education hopefully by September. If you’re developer or partner, sign up to learn more about integrating with Classroom.
Google is also working with more than a dozen pilot schools and universities to try out Classroom and provide feedback. Well, looks like forgetting your homework at home, or my dog ate my paper will no longer be an excuse. We would like to hear your views on Classroom.