Posted by Andrew Cunningham, Software Engineer
(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)
It’s teacher appreciation week here in the U.S., and for me, that means celebrating the teacher who has had absolutely the most impact on my life:
Mike Zamansky. Mr Z, as he is affectionately known, has been making Computer Science cool at Stuyvesant High School for more than 20 years, and what I learned in his classes has put me on the path I’m still on today. So from me and everyone at Classroom to Mr. Z and every other teacher who inspires their students:
Thank you for doing just that.
A year ago, we marked Teacher Appreciation Week in the U.S. by
telling you that Google Classroom was on its way. This year, we’re excited to celebrate this milestone by adding some new Classroom treats in our mobile app that will make it even easier for you to keep track of your classes, no matter where you are or what device you’re on:
- Grade assignments from your phone or tablet, and add private feedback to give students guidance, encouragement, constructive criticism or personalized feedback.
- You can create and edit assignments on the go, including the ability to make a copy for every student.
- Just take a photo to create a post or assignment, so you can easily share those whiteboard notes with the class or assign the math problem that you jotted down on that napkin.
You’ll see these new features rolling out this week, and you can find more about how they work
here.
We also wanted to take a moment to look back: since Classroom became available, students have turned in more than 70 million assignments and we’ve added
more than 20 new features that you told us were important:
- The ability to have multiple teachers in a class, so that teaching teams can work together.
- Prep for classes ahead of time with draft assignments and posts.
- Autosaved grades allow you to grade in batches.
- A mobile app for Android and iOS lets you access your classes anywhere, even without cellular data or a WiFi connection.
- With the teacher assignments page, you can view all of your assignments and track student progress in one place.
- Stream settings give you control over class discussions; plus you can mute individual students and view deleted items.
- Archive your finished classes and save everything for next semester.
- Download grades as a batch, easily exporting them to any gradebook.
- 48 new visual themes and the ability to upload your own so you can customize your class.
- +mentions let you instantly add students or other teachers into a conversation, making it easier to follow a comment thread.
- Students can mark assignments as “done” when they don’t need to submit anything online.
- And many more...
Look for more updates from us soon. Now we’re off to (
virtually) hug a favorite teacher. Join us!
