If your homework is digital, can the family dog still eat it? Sadly, the answer to this question is a definite no. But the good news is that the new Google Classroom app will eliminate the need to print out term papers, 50 page PDF reading assignments and the sight of the dreaded red pen.
Google is on a mission to take over the classroom. It's already flooded schools across the United States with Chromebooks and now it aims to connect teachers and their students with a new app called Google Classroom. Google Classroom joins a long list of Apps for Education, including Docs, Sheets, Presentations and Gmail, all of which aim to make learning and teaching easier.
While the easy ability to share Google Docs, Presentations and more over Google Drive was a great advance for educators and their students, it was just the first step toward Google's goal of taking over the classroom. Google Classroom is the first app that was designed with teachers specifically in mind.
Google claims that with Classroom, teachers will be able to create and collect assignments, provide real-time feedback to students, make announcements, communicate with students outside of class, as well as keep assignments organized and easy to track.
The interface is very easy to read and simple. When the students login to the app, they see all their classes organized by teacher, subject and period. Each class has its own colorful square that shows the name of the class, period and teacher's picture. Below that information is a heading that reads, " This Week," under which all the current assignments and their due dates are listed. To see more details and the individual assignments or to communicate with the teacher, students just have to click on the box. It beats the hell out of the agendas high schools used to pass out.
Students will be able to turn in their assignments in the Classroom app, receive feedback and their grades. Over all, the Classroom app should speed up the grading process and save a whole lot of trees.
In keeping with their recently updated privacy policy for Google Apps for education, Google promises that all student and teacher data will remain private and will not be used for advertising period.
Google Classroom is available now for teachers and schools that want to sign up for the service. Google has already tested it out at several high schools and universities, where the app has been a huge success.
