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What is Google Classroom?
Technological advances have put online learning in the spotlight, but what is Google Classroom that children are being asked to use?
Google's learning platform, Google Classroom, simplifies creating, sharing, and grading assignments. It makes sharing files between teachers and students easy. It's the perfect companion for student-friendly Chromebooks. Whether you're a student or a teacher, knowing the service's ins and outs before sharing assignments is helpful.
Spam invites for Google Classrooms are out of control and unstoppable
The notification settings don't help real Classroom users
Read update
Spam has a way of getting around to all the platforms we use online. Whether it's good ol' fashioned phone calls or email, the comments section of anything, or automated content generation polluting the tubes of YouTube, it's all unpleasant and messy and the only real saving grace we have is the ability to ignore it. But for Google Classroom users who are dealing with a wave of fresh textual horrors, they might not even have a valid way of doing so.
Google Meet is spending summer vacation improving video calls for teachers and students
New ways for admins to control their meetings
Plenty of schools are returning to in-person learning in the fall, but remote classes are likely here to stay in some capacity. Google is working to improve how video conferencing works in both Classroom and Meet, with a massive boost in security and safety coming to each platform before another school semester kicks off.
Google Classroom for Android will also work offline later this year
A couple of other features are in the pipeline, too
The global pandemic has drastically increased the adoption of online education tools, as conducting classes shifts to within the safety of one's home. Google Classroom has proven to be a reliable solution, and today serves more than 140 million students. Now Google is announcing how it aims to further enhance the service for students with some new functionality.
Android Auto recently passed 500 million installs on the Play Store, possibly thanks to its inclusion on most phones shipping with Android 10, and now two more Google-made applications have passed significant milestones.
Coronavirus helped Google Classroom surpass 50 million downloads
Teachers and students are turning to Google's online learning platform to maintain classes while quarantined
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, most schools and universities around the world have had to close. Institutions have turned to services such as Zoom and Google Classroom, which have skyrocketed to being the most popular ones on the Play Store. Google's service has become so famous that it just passed 50 million downloads.
Like Zoom, Google Classroom app's rating takes massive coronavirus nosedive
Frustrated students working remotely give Google Classroom an F
Zoom isn't the only educational app that's seeing a dive in review ratings recently. While that videoconferencing service's score is on the rebound following a bit of manual moderation, Google Classroom is also taking a hit, falling as low as 2 stars (at the time of writing) from a relative high of 4.3 stars just two months back.
Most of us focus on the consumer or enterprise-facing products released by Google, but it actually has another big customer we often forget about: education. And to kick of 2019, Google is announcing a handful of new features for its Google Classroom product.
If you couldn't guess, Google Classroom was designed to be used in classrooms: teachers can use it to create and assign classwork and communicate with students. Now, the platform is coming to G Suite to afford employers the same capabilities.
When Google launched Classroom so that teachers and students would have a repository for the work they were doing, the goal was to create something as simple as possible. The app has proved popular, but Google has just announced a refresh that adds some much-needed functionality.
Google Classroom first showed up on the Play Store in 2015, as an organization tool for teachers and students. The YouTube for Android TV app is a bit older, as it first showed up in 2014, just one day after the Nexus Player went on sale. Now both apps have passed 10 million installs on the Play Store.
Last month it was announced that Google Classroom would be opened up to anyone with a Google account — the collaboration tool for education was limited to those with a G Suite account, previously. That change meant that normal users could join classrooms, but now Google is expanding the functionality and allowing anyone to create and manage classrooms, too.
Google Classroom is a fantastic tool for collaboration in schools, but the requirement to use G Suite for Education was a barrier of entry for some teachers and schools. Now Google is opening up Classroom access to normal Google accounts.
The day is approaching when kids will be back in school and out of your hair. For schools that use Google Classroom, there will be a number of nifty new features to help both kids and their parents stay on top of things. There's even a new tool for VR field trips, no permission slips needed.
With Google's annual developer conference going on, the company is pumping out news about developing things. Makes sense, I guess.
Google Classroom for Android debuted just over a year ago as part of the free suite of software provided by Google for schools. The app, just like its browser-based counterpart, is a centralized place where students can access handouts, assignments, and news from all of their classes. On the instructor side, all of those same elements can be managed in addition to the convenience of teachers having the ability to work with all their classes at once. The app is now getting the v2.0 upgrade with a series of less-than-groundbreaking improvements.