Google strengthens its Classroom platform with new features dedicated to teachers: they will arrive by the end of the year.
Distance Learning is now an essential educational tool and will continue to be so even after Covid. Google is well aware of this, and with its platform Classroom has been offering for months a complete tool for e-learning and is continuing to refine this tool to make it more effective.
During the two-day online event "Learning with Google" on February 17 and 18, Big G announced more than 50 refinements and new tools within Classroom, including one that will make teachers happy: the ability to turn off all classroom microphones with a single click during a Meet session. But there's much more, such as the possibility of adding add-on tools, or that of getting advanced statistics and keeping the electronic register synchronized. For the most part, these are new tools dedicated more to teachers than to students, and they will debut by the end of 2021.
New features of Google Meet
One of the main problems of Meet, when used for Distance Learning, is the fact that when the teacher ends the video call he is doing it only for himself: each participating student, in fact, remains connected until he presses the handset icon on the phone.
That's why there's a new feature that's as simple as it is necessary: the ability to end the call for everyone, at the same time, with a single click. Also with a single click, the teacher will soon be able to mute all students. These features will arrive in the coming weeks.
In the coming months, however, teachers will be able to choose who can join the video call and will be able to share the screen and use the chat also from mobile devices, both Android and iOS, and not only from PCs as it happens today.
The other news of Google Classroom
The whole Classroom platform, moreover, will be updated in the coming months with new features, especially of analysis of classroom behavior and levels of interaction of pupils with the lessons.
The functionality of the Android app will also improve, which will be able to work offline or with intermittent connection: students will be able to work offline, do homework, open attachments on Drive and write with Google Docs even without an Internet connection. When the connection is available, all the work done offline will be synchronized.
Another very important new feature will be the possibility given to students to take pictures of one or more pages of the notebook, handwritten, and send them to the teacher. The app will then combine all the pages into a single PDF before sending it to the teacher.
Italian students will no longer be able to copy
One of the most useful tools in the American version of Google Classroom is Originality Reports, a system that allows students to insert citations into their papers, but also allows teachers to have an automatic report on the percentage of copied text in the text.
A report that automatically reveals whether the student has copied. Soon this feature will be available in 15 different languages, including Italian.