I’ve previously posted about the new Google “Classroom” (see Wow! 800 Pound Gorilla Google Unveils “Google Classroom” That May Make Many Present Tools Irrelevant).
Today, Google made it available for free to any teacher with a Google Apps For Education account.
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.
Just keep in mind that it does not permit collaboration on documents or attaching rubrics. I’m hoping that we get to take on the great workflow managements solutions AND keep what we need with Drive.
On another note, anyone know how to access it and get it “turned on” or whatever term the google gods are using these days?