Google announced this week a variety of updates to both Google Classroom and Google Expeditions, updates that are already receiving rave reviews and are expected to further strengthen its presence in the modern day classroom.
New features for the Google Classroom app will now allow teachers to “invite” parents to monitor students’ daily and weekly progress as well as easily view classroom announcements.
"When a teacher invites a parent to Classroom, they can see daily and weekly summaries of what their child has accomplished, and view any class announcements. Now parents won’t be taken by surprise when it comes time to have that annual parent-teacher conference,” says TheNextWeb.com.
Certainly, more and more teachers are looking for ways to engage parents in what’s going on inside the classroom using technology, and Google has delivered for this upcoming school year.
Other new features include a white board annotation tool that gives students a “portable classroom whiteboard” via their personal devices.
"Today, students and teachers can make good use of [the] age-old learning technique of jotting down ideas fast (instead of simply typing up notes) thanks to Google Classroom's new annotation tool. This doodle functionality lets students answer questions in freehand, and highlight important text in different colors,” Tech Times says of the new feature.
The company also announced updates to Google Expeditions. Using Google Cardboard, Expeditions provides students with immersive, virtual reality field trip experiences. Now, instead of just physical places being destinations for student learning (like Machu Picchu or the International Space Station), the program now provides students with seven new field trips that include a journey inside the human body. According to EdSurge, Expeditions now offers over 200 virtual reality destinations to learners.
Read more about the new updates here.
Nicole Gorman, Senior Education World Contributor
8/18/2016
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