Google Classroom is a new tool coming to Google Apps for Education. Classroom weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease. And it lets students organize their work, complete and turn it in, and communicate directly with their teachers and peers.
Classroom helps teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly. When teachers create assignments, they can choose to share a single document, or automatically make a copy for each student. They can quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback.
Classroom automatically creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student. Students can easily see what’s due on their Assignments page, so they can stay on top of their work.
Classroom also lets teachers make announcements and pose questions—improving communication inside and outside of class.
Classroom was designed hand-in-hand with teachers to help them save time, keep classes organized, and improve communication with students.
Here are some of the most important benefits:
Easy to set up
Teachers can add students directly or share a code with their class to join. It takes just minutes to set up.
Saves time
The simple, paperless assignment workflow allows teachers to create, review, and grade assignments quickly, all in one place.
Improves organization
Students can see all of their assignments on an assignments page, and all class materials are automatically filed into folders in Google Drive.
Enhances communication
Classroom allows teachers to send announcements and questions instantly. Since students can post to the stream, they can help out their classmates.
Affordable and secure
Like the rest of our Google Apps for Education services, Classroom contains no ads, never uses your content or student data for advertising purposes, and is free for schools.
Teachers and professors can apply for a preview of Classroom. Based on the requests Google receives, a limited number of educators will be invited to try it.
Google is also inviting other ed tech companies to inquire about integrating their tools with Google Classroom. Google is aiming to make sure it works alongside all existing tools that teachers use.
By September, Google Classroom will be available to any school using Google Apps for Education.
Read more here: http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/05/06/google-developing-free-lms-as-part-of-apps-for-education.aspx
