Tag Archives: Google Apps for Education

Celebrating India’s educators this Teachers’ Day

Around the world, teachers and students have found that they can support their teaching and learning with technology in the classroom.

Here in India, teachers have also been using technology to enrich student learning. From giving rural students access to new online tools, to developing online resources for other teachers to use, or finding new ways to help gifted students accelerate. This Teachers’ Day we wanted to celebrate some these teachers from across India who are championing technology in the classroom and helping their students thrive.

Bringing web-based education to rural areas

Dipak Tatpuje
Dipak Tatpuje is a senior lecturer at Satara Polytechnic with over 30 years teaching experience. He has pioneered technology in rural classrooms and trained over 150 rural teachers on how to use free online tools. He believes technology can be a great equalizer and says that empowering rural students through technology “allows them not to spread their wings and walk further in life.”
Balaji Jadhav
Balaji Jadhav is another rural teacher who supports teachers. A few years back Balaji taught himself HTML on YouTube, then developed a series of interactive, HTML-based online tests which are now used by over 500 teachers everyday. He launched a blog for fellow educators in Maharashtra, and is now an advisor for five state government departments and trains teachers in 36 school districts about how to use blogs for teaching.

Nurturing student’s abilities

Sarvesh Srinivasan
As director of the Gifted Education and Research (GEAR) Foundation in Bangalore, Sarvesh Srinivasan champions technology adoption for personalized learning.  He ran a 10-month pilot program with Google Apps for Education for middle schools students to help teachers identify students’ strengths and tailor their teaching for them

Bringing digital tools to urban schools
Sangeeta Gulati
Sangeeta Gulati is the Head of the mathematics department at the Sanskriti School in New Delhi, and has championed the use of technology in the classroom for over a decade. Recipient of the Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching in 2011, Sangeeta encourages her students to be creative with technology. She is currently focused on building her students collaborative learning skills, and says she finds herself  “a stronger, more effective teacher who is connected with her students” using Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks.

A huge thanks to these teachers, and all the teachers across India that use technology to enrich their teaching and their students learning.  

Posted by Bani Dhawan, Country Head, EDU Outreach programs

Feature enhancements to Google Classroom

Google Classroom launched this summer to make Google Apps for Education even simpler — saving teachers time and making it easier to collaborate with students. Today, we’re launching five improvements to Classroom, focusing on things educators and students around the world told us were most important to them:

  • Groups integration: Ability to pre-populate classes using existing Google Groups. If your school uses tools like School Directory Sync, admins can sync class rosters from the student information system (SIS) into Groups.
  • Mark assignments as “done”: Students can mark assignments as complete even if there's nothing to turn in (e.g. watch a video, read a chapter, bring something to class)
  • Export all grades: Teachers will now have the ability to download grades for all assignments at once, making it easier to export assignments to any gradebook
  • Sorting: Teachers can now choose to sort students by first or last name, depending on their needs
  • Greater teacher controls: Teachers can now set permissions for whether or not their class can post or comment in the stream, they can mute individual students from posting or commenting and can even view previously deleted items in the stream

Release track:
Rapid release and Scheduled release

For more information:
Google for Education Blog Post

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Announcing Drive for Education

Today we announced that we’ll bring Drive for Education, with unlimited storage and enhanced administrative controls, to the Google Apps for Education platform. In the coming months, the features below will be added to all Google Apps for Education accounts at no charge:  

  • Unlimited storage: Store as many Google Drive files, Gmail messages, and Google+ photos as you need. Individual file sizes up to 5TB will be supported.
  • Vault: Use Google Apps Vault to archive emails and chats, to search Drive files, and to preserve important information for your organization.
  • Enhanced auditing and controls: Gain insights from new activity and audit reports for Google Drive.

Release track:
Specific launch timeline information will be added to the Google Apps Release calendar once available

For more information:
Google for Work Blog Post

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Classroom now available to Google Apps for Education

Today we started to open Classroom all Google Apps for Education users helping teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly.

Classroom includes time-saving features like the ability to automatically make a copy of a Google Document for each student, and also creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student to help keep everyone organized. Students can keep track of what’s due on the Assignments page and begin working with just a click. Teachers can quickly see who has or hasn't completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback and grades right in Classroom.

We’ll be rolling out to more users every day, so if you go to classroom.google.com with your Apps for Education account and don’t have access yet, please check back soon.


Release track:
Rapid release and Scheduled release

For more information:
Enterprise blog post

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

whatsnew.googleapps.com
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