Editor’s note: Today’s post is by Harriet Ogilvie, a teacher at Lundavra Primary School in Fort William, Scotland. Harriet was one of the many teachers who recently joined us at BETT 2019 to share stories about using technology that engages students and transforms learning. Below, Harriet explains how she and other Lundavra teachers help students build communication skills and create online portfolios using G Suite for Education.

At Lundavra Primary School, students and teachers encourage parents and other local residents to visit our schools and learn about what’s happening in our classrooms. It’s important to us that we connect the Fort William community to the life of the school. To make this happen, we invite everyone in the area to “Community Cafes,” once-a-month social events featuring student singing, homemade baked goods and a book exchange.

After the Community Cafes, students with Chromebooks in hand ask people if they enjoyed attending, and what they’d like to see at future Cafes. The students enter responses into Google Forms, which is helpful for us teachers as we plan our future community events—plus, it’s much easier to keep track of than paper forms that wouldn’t be returned. When students are getting this feedback using Google Forms, they can connect and communicate with fellow students, teachers and people in the community. Students learn language and communication skills as they formulate questions to ask attendees and start conversations with adults.

For students, gaining digital skills and building confidence often starts in the Community Cafes, but continues through students’ development of learning portfolios, which are records of their classroom projects and their accomplishments. The portfolios help pupils take ownership of their learning and show what they've accomplished to peers and parents.

These portfolios used to be on paper. When we switched to online portfolios, students could be more creative in telling stories about their academic careers—for instance, by creating video book reports and adding photos of themselves and their classmates. They build portfolios using Google Sites—a much more flexible and engaging tool than paper portfolios that weren't easy to share and frequently misplaced. Students use the Padlet app with their Chromebooks to write regular reflections about their work, and embed the Padlet pages into their Google Sites. Using YouTube, students work with their peers to create vlogs about stories they write themselves. By the time students reach Year 7, they can teach their younger classmates how to build online portfolios—a confidence-building exercise for those about to move on to secondary school.

Teachers and students need tools that encourage students to leave their comfort zones. In our case, the tools in the background are from Google: Videos, portfolios, surveys, documents and online research that inspire students to choose how they want to learn and create. Every time students use Google tools, they learn skills that go beyond the lesson at hand. When they build their online portfolios, students learn how to organize content; when they teach younger students how to use Google Sites, they learn about leadership. And when teachers create assignments in Google Classroom and provide comments while students are working, students learn to give and receive feedback and collaborate with others. We’re excited to find new ways to use Google to help our students become confident, engaged learners.

Editor’s note: This week, we’re joining thousands of educators and students at BETT in London. Visit us at booth C230, where you can demo a range of Chromebooks designed for education, including the brand new Chrome OS tablet. Follow along on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.

Power up a Chromebook and watch as it transports students to the Taj Mahal, the Great Barrier Reef or a state-of-the-art science lab. It’s like magic, except the magicians are the teachers who inspire engaged and focused learning. As the leaders of these journeys, teachers give students the opportunity to explore the limits of their imagination—all on a device that’s simple to use and easy to navigate. While we’re here at BETT, we’re exploring more ways to bring magic moments to the classroom. So open up a Chromebook, and try out a few of the things it can do.

Secure and accessible, out of the box

2. Explore built-in security and accessibility features:When you customize your security settings with multi-layered security, automatic updates, individual profiles and data protection, they’ll follow you no matter what device you log into. Learn more about customizing settings in G Suite and on Chromebooks to support all learners—including those with visual aids, auditory aids and more.

3. Become an Internet Legend:With our online safety program developed in partnership with the experts at Parent Zone, all Key Stage 2 primary school teachers can now order the Be Internet Legends curriculum pack for free. It’s available in new languages, including Arabic, Belgian, Italian, Polish and will soon be available in Turkish.

Plan with efficiency, collaborate & explore, check for understanding

4. Plan with Classroom and Course Kit:In addition to the new Classwork page, Classroom has a refreshed look and feel. And if you love G Suite but use a different LMS, you can now use Course Kit, a free toolkit that incorporates G Suite into your existing LMS.

5. Collaborate with Jamboard: Create, edit, and view Jams (a “Jam” is a collaborative whiteboard space) on your Chromebook or from a Chrome browser with Jamboard or the Jamboard app. You can now modify frames, switch quickly from selection to drawing and use familiar keyboard shortcuts when jamming. Soon, you’ll also be able to add images. Head over to Workbench for a new course on student agency and engagement using Jamboard.

6. Explore the world in Augmented and Virtual reality:Now students can create VR tours using Tour Creator on their Chromebooks, and view them together through a guided experience using the Expeditions Android app (coming soon to iOS). We’re also translating our most popular VR and AR tours into Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

7. Sign up for the locked mode and Gradebook betas:On managed Chromebooks, locked mode prevents students from browsing away from the Quiz until they submit their answers. The new Gradebook in Google Classroom lets you check grades, see average grades by student or assignment, and choose to calculate grades by weighted average or total points-based.

Bringing learning to life with STEAM

9. Prepare for the future with Applied Digital Skills: Students learn critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity and digital skills with new lessons mapped to the UK Essential Digital Skills Framework and the Computing National Curriculum in England, all on the new UK English Applied Digital Skills website.

10. Get hands on with Science Journal:Now, you can sign in with your G Suite for Education account to save and access your experiments across your devices using Google Drive. Check out new training modules and lessons on the Google for Education Teacher Center and Scholastic. For more hands-on science, order the new Science Kit from Arduino for middle school science classrooms, or try out Science Journal’s Android app with Vernier's new Go Direct line of classroom sensors.

11. Travel the globe with Google Earth:Bring the whole world to each desk in your classroom, no download required. Students can quiz their animal knowledge in Street View, learn about weather, volcanoes and sea surface temperature with map layers, measure area and distance, and see 3D views of buildings and landmarks.

Supporting educators through professional development

12. Learn with the Teacher Center:We’ve added new trainings on Jamboard, CS First, Applied Digital Skills and Science Journal. To support educators globally, the Teacher Center is now localized in 17 languages, with Italian coming later this year.

13. Engage with the education community:Looking for an expert? Coming soon, an updated Google for Education Directory can help you find a local expert to assist a school in any number of areas including teacher trainings, transformation support and advice from other schools. Looking for in-person interaction?  We just announced our 2019 Innovation Academies, with more locations including Stockholm and London, so apply now.

Visit us at BETT this week to check out the entire ecosystem of our tools, and if you’re not able to be with us in London, stay tuned on Twitter for more news.

Earlier this year, we announced locked mode—a new way to ensure students are distraction-free when taking Quizzes in Google Forms. We’ve also been working on a better grading experience in Classroom. We’re now opening up locked mode and Gradebook via a beta program, so sign up to express interest.

Show what you know with locked mode

For a lot of teachers, a day in the life might look like this: teach innovatively and creatively, quiz without distractions, grade efficiently, give thoughtful and constructive feedback, repeat. Teachers assess knowledge and check for understanding every single day, and many use Quizzes in Google Forms to do just that. But we’ve heard feedback from teachers that they want to ensure their students aren’t navigating to other browser tabs while taking quizzes. Available only on managed Chromebooks, locked mode prevents students from navigating away from the Quiz in their Chrome browser until they submit their answers. Teachers can enable locked mode with a simple checkbox in Google Forms, giving them full control over assessments.

Built-in Chrome OS accessibility tools such as ChromeVox, select-to-speak and visual aids— including high contrast mode and magnifiers—are all available when using locked mode. And to support students who use Chrome extensions during test taking, teachers can find out which extensions are available with locked mode. Introducing new tools means extra support: we’ve created a step-by-step guide, brief animated tutorial, and new Help Center instructions for Instructional Coaches, PD partners, and teachers to make learning how to use locked mode even easier. Don’t yet have Chromebooks and want to learn more? Get in touch.

To streamline the assignment process, we’ve also added the ability for all Classroom users to create a Quiz directly from Classroom. Instead of creating quizzes in a separate browser, you can create a quiz and assign it directly to your class, or multiple classes.

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. Here are a few things you can do with the new Gradebook:

• View grades in one place:A new Grades page lets you can view a grid of submissions across assignments to easily enter grades, saving time and providing a holistic picture of a student’s progress.

• Average grades:In the gradebook grid, you can view average grades per assignment and per student, and see the overall performance in your class. You can share progress with students, so they can track their grades and know where they need to improve.

• Grade categories & settings:You can select how to calculate grades (weighted average or total points-based), add grade categories to classwork, and choose whether you’d like students to see their average grades. Access these from the Settings page.

Sign up for the locked mode and Gradebook betas today

Locked mode is only available on managed Chromebooks, and you’ll need to make sure your Chromebooks are running operating system 68 or higher. We’ll be slowly phasing the rollout for locked mode and Gradebook. If you’re interested in the new features, all teachers and administrators can express interest in either of the betas.

We’d love to hear all of the ways you’re using locked mode in Quizzes and improving your grading experience during the beta period, so please send us feedback using the “send feedback” button.

It's October. Pencils—once sharp and eager to write in August—are starting to dull. Students are gazing out the window, and it's not just because of the falling leaves—this happens every October, when the newness of the new school year has worn off.

To fight this Octoberitis, some educators get students moving by doing a gravity experiment in the stairwell, or role play activities during history. While you’re experimenting in the classroom, we’ll be launching new tools to help you keep the learning spark alive, and make the longer days feel shorter.

And want to know something that’s made our October a bit brighter? We’re excited to announce that over 40 million students and educators are now using Google Classroom, and 30 million are using Chromebooks, on top of 80 million using G Suite for Education globally.

Bring the outside world into the classroom

Using the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, educators can bring everything from a skeleton to the solar system into the classroom with the help of Expeditions AR. With content from partners like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Oxford University Press, the world comes to you when you can drop the works of Van Gogh into the middle of your Art History lesson, or a great Kapok tree when studying the rainforest. To unlock the power of AR, ask your IT administrator to enable these Android apps, and make sure your tablets are upgraded to the latest operating system.

To conduct a science experiment, the only equipment you’ll need is a Chromebook. Students can complete more than 40 science labs which map to high school biology, chemistry, and physics standards with Labster Chromebook labs. These online labs allow schools to offer unlimited lab practice time without needing to buy any extra equipment. Not only that, but these labs can also be assigned and graded with the Classroom integration, and teachers can track how students are progressing. To get labs at your school, visit labster.com/chromebooklabs.

Collaborate to reach every learner

You spend hours planning and customizing lessons to engage every learner in your class, but it can be difficult for students to follow along in rigorous and fast paced learning environments. To support students and faculty who are deaf or hard of hearing, we built closed captions in Google Slides (only available on Chrome web browsers), which uses machine learning to turn on automated closed captioning when presenting. Captions are currently available for U.S. English language only, but stay tuned as we explore adding more languages. Learn more about accessibility features in G Suite and ChromeOS.

We’ve launched new Docs updates to make writing a paper in MLA format a smoother process. You can already set left and right indentations as well as set hanging indents via a dialog box. Now, students and faculty can also adjust the margins of headers and footers, and use a vertical ruler to adjust placement of table rows and header and footer margins.

Educators can also give feedback to students in Classroom or Course Kit, our free toolkit that allows instructors to use G Suite within their existing LMS. Using the new grading tool, educators can leverage the comment bank to give feedback on Docs and PDFs. Use G Suite for Education but have a different LMS? Request access  to the Course Kit beta today.

Jamboard - the collaborative whiteboard app - can also help shake things up. We’re bringing the jam to the web, where anyone can create and collaborate on jams from individual Chromebooks, no Jamboard hardware required. And with the new View Only mode, teachers can share jam sessions from their lessons that day while restricting edit access. Have a BYOD policy, or enabling Device Off Hours? Jamboard on the web is an easy solution for collaboration.

If you’re interested in trying out a Jamboard device in your classroom, you can apply for the new Jamboard Learning Space Transformation program. Continental U.S. based G Suite for Education customers can submit a proposal on how you’ll transform your learning space with Jamboard today.

Hopefully these new features and product tips are the antidote you need to the Octoberitis that’s bound to hit your classrooms. If not, you have Halloween to look forward to...

Be sure to follow along on Google for Education’s Twitter and Facebook pages. We love hearing from you, so please share your tips for the best October yet.