Tag Archives: Google Classroom

Originality reports and rubrics now generally available for Google Classroom users

What’s changing 

Last year, we announced betas for originality reports and rubrics, two new tools for Google Classroom. Beginning today, these features are generally available for G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education Classroom users.

Who’s impacted 

End users

Why you’d use them 

Help students turn in their best work 
Originality reports check a student's work for matches across billions of web pages and books.  This can make it easier for instructors to evaluate the academic integrity of the student’s work and provide them constructive feedback.

Students can also use originality reports to check for missed citations or poor paraphrasing before they turn in a document. This gives them the opportunity to improve their work and learn from their mistakes before final submissions.

Enhance feedback to students with rubrics
A rubric is a scoring framework that makes it easier for educators to evaluate student assignments, set clear expectations, and provide actionable feedback.

With the new rubrics feature, educators can now:

  • Create a rubric as they create an assignment. 
  • Reuse rubrics from previous assignments rather than creating them from scratch.
  • Export and import Classroom rubrics to share with other instructors. 
  • Grade students work with a rubric from both the “student listing page” and Classroom’s grading view, where instructors can select rating levels as they review the assignment. 

Additionally, rubrics can be helpful for business users. For example, you can create a rubric to assess marketing plans or performance in key business areas.

Additional details 

Language availability for originality reports:
Note that originality reports are only available in English and for Google Docs at the moment. See below for details on expanded language options available in beta.

Number of originality reports available per assignment:
Classroom instructors can enable originality reports on three assignments per class for free. Instructors who use G Suite Enterprise for Education can turn on originality reports for unlimited assignments per class.

Regardless of what G Suite for Education edition their instructor uses, students can run originality reports on a document three times per assignment before submitting. When students submit their work, a new originality report is created for the instructor.

More options for originality reports available in beta:

  • International language options: Originality reports are launching in beta for the following languages: French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

  • Student-to-student comparison: Originality reports will also compare student work against past student submissions within a school's domain. This feature is only available to G Suite Enterprise for Education customers.

You can learn more and sign up for these betas using this form.

Getting started 

End users: 
Originality reports: Once originality reports are available in your domain, instructors can turn them on per assignment by checking the originality reports checkbox within the assignment creation process. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using originality reports.



Rubrics: Visit the Help Center to learn more about creating a rubric in Classroom.

Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Originality reports and rubrics:
    • Available to G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education customers and Classroom users
    • Not available to G Suite Basic, G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Business, and G Suite for Nonprofits customers

  • Beta availability
    • International language options for originality reports: available to G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education customers.
    • Student-to-student comparison: available to G Suite Enterprise for Education customers only.

Resources 


Roadmap 




All classes moving to Google Classroom with the Classwork Page in September

What’s changing

Last year, we introduced a new version of Classroom that provides additional features, including a Classwork page to help teachers better organize assignments. Newly created classes automatically include this Classwork page, with the option for instructors to revert classes back to the version of Classroom without Classwork.

The previous version of Classroom (without the Classwork page) is deprecated and will be discontinued on September 4, 2019. This means that new classes will be created using the version of Classroom that includes the Classwork page—instructors will no longer have the option to revert to the version without Classwork. In addition, all classes still using the previous version will be automatically converted to the version of Classroom that includes the Classwork page on September 4.

Why it’s important

Any class materials that exist in the Class Settings page will not be carried over, however instructors can create the same experience in the new Classroom by adding the same materials to the Classwork page. Note that you’ll still be able to access these materials, excluding links to YouTube content, via Google Drive.


 How to get started

  • Admins: Instructors will be notified of this change via in-product notifications starting in August, but we recommend you also prepare them for the update.
  • End users: Instructors should add any materials that previously existed on the Class Settings page in the original version of Classroom to the Classwork page in the new version of Classroom.  

Additional details

For more information and resources on Google Classroom for your instructors, check out our Help Center and Teacher Center. Your instructors can also view this video on how to create resources in the Classwork page using topics.

Helpful links



Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Create rubrics in Classroom with a new beta

What’s changing 

You can now create rubrics in Classroom as part of a new beta. Classroom instructors and admins can request to be whitelisted for this beta by filling out this form.

Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users

Why you’d use it 

Rubrics are commonly used with complex assignments that require multiple steps and criteria. Now, educators can create and attach a rubric to an assignment as a guideline for students and to refer back to when understanding their grades.

For business users, rubrics can be used to assess strategies in marketing plans or to evaluate performance in key areas of the business.

With this beta, users can create rubrics that meet their specific needs, making it faster and easier to deliver rich feedback to key stakeholders.

How to get started 

  • Admins and Classroom instructors: Apply for the beta here. 

Additional details 

This beta is covered by Classroom’s terms of service and privacy policy. This means teachers and instructors can request to be individually whitelisted for this beta. Admins can request access for their domain or a specific group of users.

Helpful links 

Availability 

G Suite editions 
  • Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default? 

  • This feature will be OFF by default. Once accepted into the beta, it can be enabled at the domain and group level.

Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Gradebook in Classroom now generally available

What’s changing 

Last year, we announced a beta for Gradebook in Classroom. Gradebook makes grading easier, allowing teachers to keep their assignments and grades in a single place in Classroom. This feature is now generally available.

Gradebook for Google Classroom

Who’s impacted 

End users

Why you’d use it 

Better grading in Classroom 
One of the top requests from educators is an improved grading workflow. Gradebook allows teachers to easily input and view grades across their classes and students. With the ability to view all assignments and grades in one place, teachers can stay organized and holistically follow the performance of an entire class over time. To learn more about our grading improvements for Classroom, see our post on the Keyword.

How to get started 

  • Admins: No action required. 
  • End users: To get started with Gradebook, log in to Classroom and click on the Grades tab at the top of the page. 

Helpful links 

Availability 

Rollout details 
G Suite editions 
  • Available to all G Suite editions 
On/off by default? 
  • This feature will be ON by default.

Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Elevate your quizzing and grading experience with two G Suite for Education beta programs

We’re offering two new beta programs for G Suite for Education customers to improve their quizzing and grading experience.

Locked mode in Quizzes in Google Forms 
This summer, we announced locked mode in Quizzes in Google Forms as a new way to keep students focused during assessments. Available only on managed Chromebooks running operating system 68 or higher, locked mode prevents students from navigating away from the Quiz in their Chrome browser until they submit their answers. Once enabled, teachers can enable locked mode with a simple checkbox, giving them full control over assessments.




Better grading in Classroom 
Earlier this year, we introduced new grading tools and a comment bank for richer, better feedback. Today, we’re continuing to strengthen the grading process in Classroom with a beta for a new Gradebook to better enable teachers to keep their assignments and grades in one place, and keep this important task more organized.



Express interest in the betas 
Beta programs for locked mode and Gradebook are now available to G Suite for Education customers. All teachers and G Suite for Education admins can express interest by completing this form. Check out the full post on the Google for Education blog and the Help Center for more details. 

Launch Details

Editions:
Available to G Suite for Education editions only

Action:
Admins and teachers can express interest by completing this form

More Information
Help Center
Google for Education blog post



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Google Classroom for all G Suite customers

Google Classroom makes it easy for teachers to create classes, distribute assignments, give quizzes, and communicate with students. Today, we’re expanding the walls of Classroom and making the platform available as an additional service to G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise customers. Admins can decide whether to opt in or out of new services. Classroom is on by default, unless you’ve chosen to manually opt in to new services.

Just as Classroom helps teachers and students save time, improve organization, and enhance communication, it can also help academies, tutoring centers, and for-profit institutions that manage groups of learners in an instructor-led setting. Explore the possibilities of Classroom for your organization, today.


What to expect from Classroom 

Classroom is designed for schools and is not an enterprise learning management system, but it is now available as an additional service to G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise customers. It remains a core service for G Suite for Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers. Note that users in G Suite for Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits domains will not be able to join classes created by users in G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise domains.

Have an idea for Classroom? We encourage you to submit your feedback through the “Send Feedback” button in the application. For more information, check out the Help Center and Help Forum.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available as an additional service to G Suite Basic, Business, and Enterprise editions; available as a core service to G Suite for Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits editions

Rollout pace:
Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact: 
All end users

More Information 
Help Center: About Classroom
Help Forum: Classroom

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Back to school with enhancements to the Classroom API

Posted by Andrew Garrett, Software Engineer, Google Classroom

Google Classroom makes it easy for teachers and students to use the edtech tools they love, and that’s not just limited to Google tools. With the Classroom API, hundreds of developers have built integrations with Classroom that make it easier for admins and teachers to manage classes, share content and more.

One popular way that applications integrate with Classroom is by re-using Classroom rosters—teachers can import their classes with a click and students don’t have to have a new login. Today, we’re making it easier for developers to keep rosters in-sync between their apps and Classroom by launching real-time notifications of changes.

Now, an application can now receive roster changes for a domain, or for an individual course. Powered by Google Cloud Pub/Sub, a state-of-the-art messaging service for passing information between applications, developers no longer have to poll various Classroom API endpoints for changes, which gives teachers and students a more seamless experience. If a new student joins or leaves a Classroom class, that roster change can be automatically applied across applications.

How Flat Education syncs rosters in real-time 

Flat Education, a collaborative music notation app, uses the new updates to instantly update class rosters. Before, when teachers and students accessed the Flat Education application, it would poll the Classroom API for changes and then make updates, delaying data. Now, roster data can be refreshed instantly.
With today's Classroom API update, applications can sync roster data instantly. When a new student joins Google Classroom (bottom left), the student is instantly added to the corresponding music class in Flat Education (top right).

We’re also making the Classroom API more comprehensive with additional enhancements so you can:
  • Create and update announcements. Last year, we launched the ability for external applications to access and create assignments and questions. This update gives applications access to all the posts in Classroom. 
  • Create and update individualized posts. Earlier this year, we made it possible for teachers to post to individual students in Classroom and now, applications can do the same programmatically. This is especially helpful for applications that help teachers differentiate and individualize learning.
For more details on what you can build with the Classroom API, check out the documentation. You can also ask questions (or answer them!) on StackOverflow using the google-classroom tag, and report bugs or feature requests via the issue tracker.

Lastly, let us know what you're building using the #withClassroom hashtag on Twitter or Google+.

A new issue tracker for G Suite developers

Posted by Ryan Roth, Developer Programs Engineer and Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, G Suite
You may have read recently that the Google Cloud Platform team upgraded to Issue Tracker, the same system that Google uses internally. This allows for improved collaboration between all of us and all of you. Issues you file will have better exposure internally, and you get improved transparency in terms of seeing the issues we’re actively working on. Starting today, G Suite developers will also have a new issue tracker to which we’ve already migrated existing issues from previous systems. Whether it’s a bug that you’ve found, or if you wish to submit a favorite feature request, the new issue tracker is here for you. Heads up, you need to be logged in with your Google credentials to view or update issues in the tracker.
The new issue tracker for G Suite developers. 

Each G Suite API and developer tool has its own “component” number that you can search. For your convenience, below is the entire list. You may browse for issues relevant to the Google APIs that you’re using, or click on the convenience links to report an issue or request a new/missing feature:
To get started, take a look at the documentation pages, as well as the FAQ. For more details, be sure to check out the Google Cloud Platform announcement, too. We look forward to working more closely with all of you soon!

Building #withClassroom: stories of real schools using Classroom integrations

By Lindsay Rumer, Product Marketing Manager, Google for Education
A few years ago, we launched the Classroom API to make it easier for developers to integrate their applications with Classroom, and for administrators to manage classes. Since then, hundreds of applications have integrated with Classroom to help teachers gamify their classes, improve students’ writing skills, build interactive presentations and more.

Using the API, developers can build deep integrations that manage Classroom rosters, assignments and grades. Or they can simply embed the Classroom share button to let users quickly share content. For teachers and students, these integrations create a seamless experience between Classroom and their favorite education apps.

Valuable integrations have been built to support the needs of teachers and students in the classroom that showcase the creative possibilities available through the Classroom API. Today, we take a look at how some schools are using Classroom integrations.

Enriching lessons with rich content from BrainPOP 

In the words of Mike Jones, a teacher at Illinois State University’s K-8 Lab School, “Class time is precious. Why would I want to waste any of it with a process that can easily be automated?”

Improved automation is one of the key reasons we’ve seen education applications integrate with Google Classroom and one of those applications is BrainPOP. BrainPOP offers digital educational content that engages students through animated movies, learning games, quizzes, concept mapping, movie-making, and more.

The team at BrainPOP recognized that manually setting up individual student accounts for My BrainPOP could be a tedious task for teachers. Utilizing the Classroom API, the team at BrainPOP developed an integration that allows teachers to import their classes directly into My BrainPOP, automatically creating single sign-on-ready, student accounts and allowing students to log into BrainPOP through the Google launcher menu. According to Jones, the integration “allows all staff to easily access the benefits of BrainPOP and do what they do best: help children learn.”

Adjusting teaching tactics in real-time with Edulastic 

Egg Harbor Township in New Jersey holds an intensive summer program for its Title I elementary students who aren’t ready to enter the next grade level. During last year’s program, the school had just 12 days to address learning gaps, which meant teachers had to stay laser-focused on deficiencies and adjust teaching tactics quickly to help their students achieve success. Given the tight timeframe, the school turned to Edulastic, an online assessment system that gives teachers instant teaching insights, and Google Classroom.

Edulastic’s Google Classroom sync meant the summer program could be set up quickly with no additional passwords or logins for teachers or students. As a result of the pilot, Egg Harbor Township Title I teachers used this integration beyond their summer program and the entire school subsequently decided to use it for their assessments as well.

Simplifying setup and syncing with Little SIS 


Classroom integrations can also give IT leaders insights and administrative powers in Classroom. For instance, Little SIS for Classroom, an app designed and built by the team at Amplified Labs, is using the Classroom Courses and Guardians APIs to automate the setup and daily sync of Google Classroom classes, rosters, and guardian invites from information in the school’s SIS.
San Francisco Unified School District is piloting a roster-integrated approach to Google Classroom that they hope to scale to their 57,000 students. Executive Director of Technology & Innovation David Malone first approached Amplified Labs with guarded optimism because of the district’s size, but since installation he feels much more confident. “Despite being new to the market, I am really impressed at the maturity and thoughtfulness of the Little SIS app. It loaded our entire district’s G Suite users and 7,500 Classroom classes in just a few minutes, and allowed us to get a great baseline on the current state of adoption.”

We’ve been thrilled to see what developers have created using the Classroom API capabilities and the impact that it's had on teachers, students and administrators. If you’re interested in learning more about the Classroom API, check out developers.google.com/classroom or search for google-classroom on Stack Overflow. You can also join our announcement list to keep up with updates to our API.

Taking learning beyond classroom walls with new features for Back to School

Posted by Dina Kachintseva, Classroom Software Engineer and Felix Wang, User Experience Designer

As any teacher would tell you, the classroom isn’t the only place where learning happens — it’s just the tip of the iceberg. From parents who help students with homework, to extracurriculars, field trips and more, there are so many ways students can learn beyond the walls of the classroom. This is why today we’re announcing new features to help teachers inspire learning for students, regardless of place or time.

Parents and guardians stay informed with Google Classroom email summaries


Parent participation has a major impact on student learning. Today, we’re launching a new feature in Google Classroom that will automatically share summaries of student work with parents. Once invited by a teacher, parents and guardians can receive automated daily or weekly email summaries of student work and class announcements, making it easier to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the classroom.
“I enjoy helping my children prepare for assignments that they have coming up – and the earlier I know about them, the better,” says Michelle Barrette, a mother of five Medfield, Massachusetts students and pilot user of the new Classroom feature. “This way I can prevent them from missing deadlines and see if they need help brainstorming topics or solutions.”

Annotations help students color outside the lines — and the classroom


When teachers want to help students understand complex math or science concepts, visuals — like drawings on a whiteboard — can help. But how does this work when students and teachers aren’t in the classroom together? Today, we’re announcing the ability to annotate documents in the Google Classroom mobile app.

Using annotations, students can complete assignments, sketch out math problems or even create visuals of creative ideas directly on their devices. This gives students a portable classroom whiteboard on which they can easily draw and sketch. Now, thinking through complex homework challenges from home, school or on the bus is even easier. 

Teachers can use annotations to quickly grade assignments by writing directly on the student’s work, or highlighting the most important passages in a text or novel. Anne Farrahar, an English teacher in the Medfield Public Schools district, explains how her lessons benefitted from her high school students annotating a critique of Shakespeare’s "The Merchant of Venice." “They highlighted all the ideas they thought were convincing arguments in one color, and all the ideas they disagreed with in another color,” says Farrahar. “This gave me the chance to assess students' individual understanding and, based on their responses, gather ideas for future lessons.” 


More Expeditions thousands of miles away or inside the human body


Have you ever wondered what it would be like to visit the White House Kitchen Garden or what it would be like to travel inside the human body? Today we’re announcing new Expeditions that bring students far beyond the usual places they can travel. With these adventures, like a visit to Bhutan or an exploration of the human vascular systems, teachers are able to deeply immerse students in lessons, creating vivid and memorable learning experiences.
In addition, the Expeditions app is coming soon to iOS. More teachers, including those who use iPads, will be able to share Expeditions with their students by using full-screen mode on the devices in place of a VR viewer. With over 200 Expeditions available, we’re excited for them to experience these virtual field trips on more devices. 

More Google for Education features for busy teachers and curious minds


 In celebration of the new school year, we’re excited to share more new tools for teachers and students to break down traditional barriers within the classroom: 
  • A more organized Classroom. To make Classroom even easier to use, teachers can organize the class stream by adding topics to posts, and teachers and students can filter the stream for specific topics. Plus, users can now preview documents, PDFs, images and videos, all without leaving Classroom. 
  • Share your screens wirelessly at school. With the latest Chrome update, Cast for Education is now available to all teachers and students. This free Chrome app carries video and audio across complex school networks and has built-in controls for teachers — no new hardware required. Look out for updates including support for secondary domains coming soon. 
  • Google Forms get an upgrade with images. In Forms, teachers can now add images to questions or as multiple choice answers. This is perfect for subjects like math when students need to show their understanding of diagrams and graphs. 
  • Inbox by Gmail for the classroom. Inbox by Gmail is rolling out to Google for Education users. Coming soon, email notifications from Classroom will be intelligently grouped in Inbox, making it easy for teachers and students to find important updates and highlights. 
Whether students are at home or in the classroom, teachers can continue to inspire and support their curiosity with Expeditions, Classroom, Apps and Chromebooks. Stay tuned this week on Google+ and Twitter for more details on these exciting new tools.