01_Student - Class Cards (1)

Google has just unveiled Google Classroom, which looks like a one-stop shop for teachers and students.

It’s free, with no ads, and describes itself as providing the ability to:

  • Create and collect assignments: Classroom weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly. They can quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback to individual students.
  • Improve class communications: Teachers can make announcements, ask questions and comment with students in real time—improving communication inside and outside of class.
  • Stay organized: Classroom automatically creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student. Students can easily see what’s due on their Assignments page.

It’s invite-only for now, but is supposed to be available to anyone by September.

For schools that are very technology-equipped, serving student populations that are the same (which leaves out schools like our inner-city comprehensive high school and many others around the country), Google Classroom should find a ready audience.

Here’s a video about it: