Tag Archives: classroom

Time for a refresh: Meet the new Google Classroom

In 2014, a team of Googlers, including several former teachers, began spending time with educators. We learned that teachers loved using G Suite’s collaborative tools with their students, but found that some of the features were complicated to use. From the very beginning, Google Classroom focused on simplifying tech, so that teachers and students could spend time on learning. Today, we’re continuing that mission and announcing the biggest refresh to Classroom since its launch.

A better way to create, organize, and find work

We designed Classroom to be as easy to use as possible, so we originally provided one class Stream for teachers and students to share new content and ideas. But a single stream, while simple, became too crowded, and it was hard for teachers and students to find what they needed. That’s why we’re introducing a new Classwork page, which lets teachers better organize assignments and questions by grouping them into modules and units.

Daniel Brennick, a middle school science teacher in Florida, started using Classroom two years ago. Today, it’s an everyday part of his teaching: “I distribute a Doc through Classroom, where all kids can work on the Doc together, at the same time. I project it on the board to facilitate quick discussion. It makes sure everyone gets heard, and amplifies student voice.”  Daniel is one of thousands of teachers who have been beta testing the new Classwork page, and he’s excited to use it to help him and his students stay more organized. “I love it! Our school is making a big push for long-term planning and more thoughtful units. I’ve already started using the Classwork page to create a visual for myself of what I’ll be teaching.”

Introducing the Classwork page in Google Classroom

With a dedicated page for classwork, the Stream can be a better hub of class discussion and activity.  It’s conveniently organized in a separate page to reduce clutter, so that students can have discussions in the Stream to develop their online communication skills within their classroom community.  

Better, faster feedback with the new grading tool in Classroom

Providing frequent, actionable feedback is a key part of the learning cycle, but it can be time consuming to give thoughtful, personalized feedback to each student.  So, we’re introducing a new tool, built directly into Classroom’s grading workflow, to speed up grading and encourage thoughtful engagement. Instructors now have a comment bank, so they can easily save and reuse commonly used feedback. They can also quickly toggle between student files and submissions when grading, without having to open each file individually. The new grading tool works with Docs Editors, Office files, PDFs, videos files, and more.  

Nick Shunan, who teaches digital citizenship in Ohio, is excited to use the new grading tool to streamline feedback. “The less time I have flipping back and forth to enter grades, the more time I can put into giving students more specific and individualized feedback, and foster that communication back-and-forth. I can’t wait to use it.”

Grading tool in Classroom

Easily set up and manage your class

Whether it’s updating class settings, or working with multiple sections of a class, we’re making improvements to help teachers and students get to what they need quickly.  Other exciting updates include:

Copy and reuse classwork: Now teachers who want to re-use previous classes, or educators who collaborate to design a class can easily copy all topics and assignments from one class to another.  All work will be copied as drafts, so teachers can still make modifications before posting.

Improved People and Settings pages:We’ve consolidated information to help users get to what they need more quickly.  Teachers can view and manage co-teachers, students and guardians on the People page. We’ve introduced a Settings page for all class settings, so teachers have one convenient location to update class descriptions, display or reset class codes, manage and control how students post on the Stream, and more.

Turn off notifications for a class:We’ve heard that teachers often join each other’s classes as co-teachers to share content and teaching strategies. But, getting notifications for all activity in a class can get overwhelming. There’s already a way to turn off specific types of notifications, and now, you can turn off all notifications for a given class.

And more updates coming soon

Thousands of teachers participated in our beta in the past month, and we are grateful to all of them for providing us so much invaluable feedback. Based on their input, we plan to launch these additional features soon:

  • Materials on the Classwork page:Teachers will be able to add Materials on the Classwork page. This will support sharing and organizing resources like readings or reference materials.

  • Classwork page for existing classes:Moving forward, any new class that you create will automatically have the Classwork page. For any classes you created before the refresh, we’ll soon provide a way to add the Classwork page to them.

  • Create quizzes in locked mode:We announced at ISTE that teachers will be able to use locked mode to keep students focused and distraction-free when taking Google Forms quizzes on managed Chromebooks. We’ll also be adding the ability to create Google Forms quizzes from Classroom, streamlining the assignment process and saving time.

Get to know your new Classroom, and tell us what you think

This is Classroom’s biggest redesign yet, and we’re committed to helping you master the new workflow.  We’re excited to announce new trainings in the Teacher Center, created by a dedicated community of Classroom experts. From getting started with new features, to favorite tips & tricks, these new trainings are your guide to getting the most out of the updates.

These new updates will start appearing in Classroom today, and roll out to everyone over the next couple of weeks.  For more details on these updates, check out the Back to School FAQs. As always, we encourage you to use the “Feedback” button to let us know what you think.  

We hope you have the best school year yet!

Introducing Course Kit: new ways to collaborate with G Suite in your LMS, designed for Higher Ed

Effective teaching and learning require seamless collaboration between instructors and students. The right technology and training can help facilitate this connection, which is why many universities, colleges, schools and other educational institutions provide their instructors and students with a Learning Management System (LMS). In addition to using an LMS, educators and students often also use G Suite's cloud-based productivity tools to create, collaborate and communicate in real time. Until now, there hasn’t been an easy way to integrate G Suite with many LMSs.


Enter Course Kit—a free toolkit that allows instructors to use Google Docs and Drive to collect assignments, give faster and richer feedback to students, and share course materials within the LMS they’re already using. Course Kit is built using the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard so it's easy to set up and works with all LMSs that support LTI. Course Kit currently includes an assignment tool and a file embed tool, making it fast and secure to integrate G Suite's powerful collaboration capabilities into teaching and learning workflows. We piloted Course Kit over the last semester with higher ed institutions, and are now making it available more widely through a beta program.

Course Kit Video

Save time for thoughtful feedback with Course Kit's assignment tool

Creating and collecting assignments in an LMS with Course Kit's assignment tool is efficient and secure. When submitting their work, students don’t have to worry about the format of their files because any file that can be stored in Google Drive works with Course Kit. Once students turn in their completed work, Course Kit automatically manages permissions and students no longer have edit access to their submitted files while being graded. For instructors, being able to use Google’s cloud-based tools that their students use every day is critical.

We have a lot of tech we’re trying to integrate together, so making it as easy as possible for faculty to receive assignments and grade in Google Docs is a big win for us. Holly Zakos
Senior Instructional Technologist
Course Kit Google Drive Instructor

Educators can use Course Kit's grading interface to easily toggle between students and their submitted files, all in one tab. They also have the ability to privately give feedback on assignment submissions with the rich collaboration features of Docs and Drive—such as in-line suggestions and margin comments. To save time for deeper, personalized feedback, Course Kit includes a new feature that lets instructors quickly insert commonly used margin comments using a customizable comment bank. “Educator comments are added to a bank, which can be easily reused over and over, or edited to make feedback more personal. Our professors found that very useful,” said Ben Hommerding, Instructional Technologist at St. Norbert College.

Course Kit Comment Hashtag

When educators are finished reviewing assignments, grades and feedback are synced to the LMS and files are returned to students. “This saves a lot of time managing grades manually,” said Hommerding. Course Kit also creates an archival copy of every returned assignment so professors have an easy-to-access record of submissions -- especially helpful if the assignment needs to be turned in several times. Students get notified when their assignment is returned and can view the instructor’s comments and feedback directly in their LMS.

Embed course materials in an LMS with Course Kit's file embed tool

Using Course Kit's file embed tool, LMS users can add course materials from Google Drive directly into LMS pages, making it easy to share materials seamlessly. Instructors can embed anything from assignment information and syllabi to lecture presentations and videos. This tool simplifies the process of sharing related materials because embedded files are right there in the LMS, organized in Drive and automatically shared, saving faculty from manually configuring sharing settings.

Course Kit Create Assignment

Join the beta


Now with the Google Docs and Drive integration within your LMS, it’s possible to streamline assignment workflows, give richer feedback, and collaborate with students. Course Kit meets industry standards for accessibility and is available in 44 languages. If your institution uses G Suite for Education, get started by requesting access to the beta. Once whitelisted, your IT administrator can install Course Kit in your LMS. Currently using Google Classroom? We are also working to add new and improved feedback functionality directly to Classroom, so stay tuned for more updates in the next few months.

It’s our goal to build tools that enable meaningful connections and lead to effective learning. As always, we’d love your feedback about Course Kit so we can continue to improve these tools, and build others that help improve teaching and learning.

Learn what you can do #withClassroom

Editor's note:This week our Google for Education team will be joining educators and edtech enthusiasts at SXSW EDU in Austin, Texas. Join us as we talk G Suite for Education and Classroom integrations during our SXSW EDU sessions. Follow along on The Keyword, Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.

A few years ago, we launched the Classroom API to make it easier for developers to integrate their applications #withClassroom, and to help teachers and students easily use Classroom with the apps they love. These applications enable educators to customize teaching and learning, bringing endless possibilities to their classrooms. Today, hear from teachers about how they use some of the many Classroom integrations available to engage and excite students.

Work with Workbench

Project-based learning (PBL) is a powerful way to teach core concepts, but can be time consuming to plan. Workbench lets teachers create, browse, and modify PBL projects, and assign the projects to students all in one platform. Kyle Nunn, a STEAM teacher at Parsons Junior High School in Redding, California, uses the Workbench integration with Google Classroom to search existing projects on the platform and quickly assign to students in Classroom, making his planning process faster and easier.

Through a hands-on project, his students use code to steer robots through a maze. Workbench guides students through the step-by-step project, resulting in more autonomous learning for them. Teachers like Kyle can track student progress and are automatically notified when students complete projects. “The result was a streamlined experience which leveraged several different technologies to achieve a highly engaging, standards-aligned, and robust programming project,” continued Nunn. Implementing project-based learning isn’t a daunting project with Workbench and Classroom.

Workbench.gif

Be a Quizizz wiz

Gamified learning can be fun for both students and teachers alike. For example, Quizizz, a platform where teachers can create, modify, share and assign interactive quizzes, is a great gamification tool regardless of subject or grade level. Since integrating with Classroom, we’ve seen teachers use Quizizz in amazing and creative ways.

Norm Peckham, an Educational Technology Trainer for the Mesa Public Schools Educational Technology Department in Mesa, Arizona had each student in his social studies class write a quiz question from the unit they were studying and submit them in Forms. He and his co-teacher then uploaded the questions to Quizziz, and assigned it to the class that same day. Once the students took their own quiz, their grades uploaded automatically to Classroom. “It was so easy and the students were amazed that they were taking a quiz that they just made themselves!” said Peckham.

The grade integration between Quizizz and Classroom wasn’t the only time saver for Bria Stacy, a teacher at Knott County Central High School in Hindman, Kentucky. Teachers at her school are required to report student progress data, and manually grading and tracking was time intensive. Quizizz automatically generates reports to track both individual progress and class-wide understanding. Being able to track, report and analyze progress more efficiently allowed her to spend more time teaching. “You can't go wrong [with Quizizz] and it works so well with Classroom. Best of all, it collects all the data you need and saves it as reports," said Stacy.

Quizizz_Classroom.gif

Classroom integrations support the needs of teachers and students, and expand what’s possible with Classroom. Explore more apps that integrate with Classroom and follow @googleforedu on Facebook and Twitter to learn more about what you can do #withClassroom.

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+.

Welcome to your first day of Classroom

We launched Google Classroom in 2014 to help teachers save time, organize classes, and improve communication with students. Since then, educators around the globe have helped teach their peers how to use Classroom. There’s been such an outpouring of instructional videos, blogs and resources, we’ve curated some of our favorites into a new collection called #FirstDayofClassroom.

#FirstDayofClassroom is designed around a simple premise: When teachers need help, they don’t need to look any further than their fellow teachers.

On the hub, you’ll find short tutorials explaining how to get started with Classroom, teacher-created videos on best practices, as well as teacher-tested tips. Want a hard copy? Printable resources, including a Getting Started guide and Group Study guide, are available on the hub for teachers to use right at their desks. It’s like being in your school’s teachers’ lounge or at a collaborative professional development event—except it’s all online.

Teachers have questions. Teachers have answers.

For every teacher ready to use Classroom, there’s a teacher ready to help. Here are just a few examples of the tips from teachers on the resource hub:

  • Lindy Hockenbary, Digital Learning Coach, stays organized by adding class resources to the materials section of the “About” tab.
  • Katie Nieves, Special Education ELA Teacher, personalizes learning by providing different projects and resources when posting an assignment.
  • Jessica Levine, Instructional Technologist, builds relationships between home and school by connecting parents and guardians to their student’s class through guardian email summaries.

We’re also organizing five interactive YouTube live sessions hosted by educators who will help you get started with Classroom. Add a session to your calendar today to join in on the training.

Join the #FirstDayofClassroom community

#FirstDayofClassroom is about expanding the community of teachers dedicated to improving the day-to-day efficiency of teaching. Whether you’re a Classroom pro or have a tried-and-true trick, help your fellow teachers by sharing your favorite tips, resources and tutorials on social media using the hashtag #FirstDayofClassroom. Then, stay tuned on Twitter where we’ll share our favorites throughout the back to school season.

Ready to get started? Visit the hub today and get all the information you need to set up your first class in no time.

Source: Education


10 ways we’re making Classroom and Forms easier for teachers this school year

We’ve seen educators do incredible things with G Suite for Education tools: creatively teach classroom material, collaborate with students, and design innovative assignments to achieve meaningful outcomes. Classroom is a useful tool for teachers, and since it launched three years ago, students have submitted more than 1 billion assignments.

This year, we’re sending teachers back to school with updates designed to help them do what they do best—teach. Today, we’re announcing 10 updates to Google Classroom and Google Forms to help teachers save time and stay organized.

SingleView-blog.gif

  1. Single view of student work: To help teachers track individual student progress, we’ve created a dedicated page for each student in Classroom that shows all of their work in a class. With this new view, teachers and students can see the status of every assignment, and can use filters to see assigned work, missing work, or returned and graded work. Teachers and students can use this information to make personalized learning decisions that help students set goals and build skills that will serve them in the future.

  2. Reorder classes: Teachers can now order their classes to organize them based on daily schedule, workload priorities or however will help them keep organized throughout the school year. And students can use this feature too. "For teachers and students, organization is important, and being able to reorder class cards allows us to keep our classes organized in a simple and personalized way," notes Ross Berman, a 7th and 8th grade math teacher. "Students can move classes around so that the first thing they see is the class they know they have work for coming up."

  3. Decimal grading: As teachers know, grading is often more complicated than a simple point value. To be as accurate with feedback as possible, educators can now use decimal points when grading assignments in Google Classroom.

  4. Transfer class ownership: Things can change a lot over the summer, including who’s teaching which class. Now, admins and teachers can transfer ownership of Google Classroom classes to other teachers, without the need to recreate the class. The new class owner can get up to speed quickly with a complete view of past student work and resources in Drive.

  5. Add profile picture on mobile: Today’s users log a lot of hours on their phones. Soon, teachers and students will be able to make changes to their Classroom mobile profiles directly from their mobile devices too, including changing their profile picture from the Google Classroom mobile app. Ready the selfies!

  6. Provision classes with School Directory Sync: Google School Directory Sync now supports syncing Google Classroom classes from your student or management information system using IMS OneRoster CSV files. Admins can save teachers and students time by handling class setup before the opening bell.

  7. New Classroom integrations: Apps that integrate with Classroom offer educators a seamless experience, and allow them to easily share information between Classroom and other tools they love. Please welcome the newest A+ apps to the #withClassroom family: Quizizz, Edcite, Kami and coming soon, Code.org.

  8. Display class code: Joining Google Classroom classes is easier than ever thanks to this new update. Teachers can now display their class code in full screen so students can quickly join new classes.

  9. Sneak Peek! Import Google Forms Quiz scores into Classroom: Using Quizzes in Google Forms allows educators to take real-time assessments of students’ understanding of a topic. Soon, teachers will be able to import grades from Quizzes directly into Google Classroom.

  10. Add feedback in question-by-question grading in Quizzes: More than test grades, meaningful feedback can improve learning. At ISTE this year, we launched question-by-question grading in Quizzes in Google Forms to help teachers save time by batch grading assessments. We’re taking it one step further and now, teachers will have the option to add feedback as well.

As educators head back to school, we want our newest Classroom teachers to get the most out of their experience. In the coming weeks, we’ll be launching a new resource hub to help teachers get set up on their first day of Classroom. If you’re already a Classroom pro, help your fellow teachers by sharing your favorite Classroom tips, tricks, resources and tutorials on social media using the hashtag #FirstDayofClassroom. Stay tuned on Twitter this Back to School season for more.

From all of us here at Google, we wish you a successful start to the school year! We hope these Google Classroom and Forms updates help you save time, stay organized and most importantly, teach effectively during back to school and beyond.

Source: Education


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. 

How ebooks can encourage reluctant students to discover the joy of reading

Posted by Andrew Caffrey, Assistant Headteacher at Streetly Academy

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Andrew McCaffrey, assistant headteacher for data and technologies at The Streetly Academy in Sutton Coldfield, United Kingdom. Caffrey, a passionate supporter of technology in classrooms, recently received the Inspirational Educator Award by the Worshipful Company of Educators. We invited him to talk about the value of ebooks in encouraging students to read.

As a teacher, I know what a gift reading can be — we all wish we had more time to tackle the books on our own lists — but not all of my students feel the same way. It can be an uphill battle to convince students that books will open up new worlds. Every day at Streetly Academy, we brainstorm ways to encourage students to find and read what they love.

To start, we set aside dedicated reading time for students so they learn the value of this fundamental skill. Reading time is scheduled into the school day, just like any other subject, which telegraphs its importance for students. During these sessions, some students bring in books from home, and some read them on their Chromebooks, which use the RM Books system so we can offer as many different titles as possible. For students who are resistant to reading, variety matters. These students often believe there’s nothing out there that they’ll enjoy, so access to different genres and topics can help pique their interest.

We’ve also noticed that reluctant readers will warm up to books on screen, since students are used to devices at home and in school. Research backs up our observation: a recent study from the UK’s National Literacy Trust found that boys in particular become more avid and confident readers when they have access to ebooks.

“A lot of students, normally boys, consider reading boring and don’t even want to attempt it,” says Rebecca Leason, an English teacher at our school. She’s seen the difference that ebooks can make with both boys and girls, as well as changing student thinking about how a “book” is defined. For example, Rebecca gives students excerpts from longer books.
Students at Streetly Academy have enjoyed the greater choice that reading with ebooks has brought them
“Students often think that reading must always involve a novel,” Rebecca told me. “The extracts give them the opportunity to look at a range of texts instead of focusing on just one. Sometimes they’re the beginnings of novels, but can also be nonfiction. A lot of students then go on to read the full texts for the subjects they enjoy.”

Greater choice of reading material is key to encouraging students to read more. Now that RM Books can be used with Google Classroom, we can select and share books even more easily with our students. We can also highlight the pages that we want to students to read so they know exactly how much reading to complete.

Along with offering students a wider range of reading choices, we also experiment with different ways to read. Rebecca, for instance, switches her teaching format depending on how students respond to a reading selection. In addition to giving students independent reading time, she’ll gauge whether small groups or a whole-class session would be more appropriate for a discussion. If students are struggling with a text, she might introduce an audio book option, or suggest that students read short articles on a subject before they move on to the full versions.

It’s heartening to see more students change their attitudes toward reading, and in some cases, to really embrace literature. One of Rebecca’s students started the school year with little interest in reading. After several months of reading short texts and discovering subjects she enjoyed, she grew so confident that she won the English award. Another reader on her way to a lifetime of discovering books!

Updates from ISTE: 4 new tools to help teachers do what they do best

Posted by Jonathan Rochelle, Director of Product Management, Google for Education and
Cyrus Mistry, Lead Product Manager, Devices and Content, Google for Education

Editor's note: This week our Google for Education team will be joining thousands of educators at the annual ISTE conference. Follow along here and on Twitter for the latest news and updates.

Teachers are great communicators, collaborators, creators and critical thinkers. It takes a teacher to empower students with these skills and create the leaders of our future. As technology becomes an increasingly integral component of our classrooms, the role of teachers becomes even more important.

Today at ISTE, we’re announcing four more ways for these everyday heroes to engage their classes and empower their students using Google tools. Look out for a deeper dive on each of these launches on the blog throughout this week.

Bring curriculum to life: introducing the Expeditions app
Since we launched the beta Expeditions Pioneer Program in September of 2015, more than one million students across 11 countries have taken one of our virtual reality trips. Today, we’re making Expeditions available to everyone. To get started, all teachers need to do is download the Expeditions app onto a set of devices. With more than 200 Expeditions to choose from, students can journey far and wide, learning from immersive new experiences. Our content offering has also grown and now includes Expeditions made by established educational content providers including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Pearson is beginning work on Expeditions content as well. The app is available today for Android and will be available for iPhones and iPads soon.

While Expeditions can be used with many of the devices schools or students already have — either smartphones with Google Cardboard or tablets in 2D full screen mode — Best Buy Education will also be making Expeditions kits available for schools to purchase. These kits will contain everything teachers need to bring their classes on amazing Expeditions: a tablet, virtual reality viewers and a router to connect them all. Kits are available for pre-order and will ship in time for back-to-school. We’ll also publish clear specs for partners interested in working with us to create their own kits.
Empower student-driven classrooms: Google Cast for Education
Collaboration is key to student success, but in most classrooms today the biggest screen in the room is out of reach for students. If students want to share their screens with the class, they have to physically connect their devices to the classroom projector. When teachers present, they’re tied to the projector at the front of the room. Educators are eager to overcome this barrier, so much so that wireless screen sharing for schools was one of the top features requested by teachers in 2015.

Today we’re announcing Google Cast for Education, a free Chrome app that allows students and teachers to share their screens wirelessly from everywhere in the classroom. Cast for Education carries video and audio across complex school networks, has built-in controls for teachers and works with Google Classroom so it’s easy to invite your students. And because the app runs on the teacher’s existing computer, it doesn’t require new hardware. Teachers run the Cast for Education app, and students can share their screens with the existing Cast feature in Chrome. Check out the Cast for Education video.
Teacher view (click to see larger) 
Student view (click to see larger)

Accelerate the feedback loop: Quizzes in Google Forms
Getting feedback early helps students learn and teachers teach. Starting today, Quizzes in Google Forms will allow teachers to auto-grade multiple choice and checkbox questions — so teachers can spend less time grading and more time teaching.

Teachers can also add review materials in the form of explanations, supplemental websites or review videos — so students can get quick, actionable feedback. Plus, teachers can get instant feedback on student progress, so they know which lessons need more explanation and what to teach next. We’ve also added a common request from educators to disallow students from sending themselves a copy of their responses.
Ignite student creativity: creative apps on Chromebooks
We’re on a mission to discover Chromebook tools that foster skills of the future, including problem-solving, digital literacy, leadership and creativity. We listened to teachers in Chromebook classrooms and collaborated with EdTechTeacher, and we’re excited to announce a collection of creative apps on Chromebooks that schools can purchase as a bundle.

Explain Everything, Soundtrap and WeVideo are creative apps that help students demonstrate their understanding of curriculum through their own unique voice. We’ve worked closely with our partners to offer these apps to schools at a special price when all three apps are purchased together. They may be purchased alongside Chromebooks or on their own, and they’re available as an annual subscription per license from Chromebook resellers in the US. Contact your school’s reseller to learn more.

Students use creative apps at Muller Road Middle School in South Carolina (watch video here)

Look out for a deeper dive on each of these product updates on the blog throughout this week. If you’re at ISTE in Denver, visit us at booth #2511 in the expo hall to demo these tools. And check out our sessions — taking place in room #103 — where educators and Googlers will be giving short presentations throughout the conference.

Canberra Public Schools use Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education to help students to "Learn, Anywhere"

Posted by Daniel Bray, Program Manager, eLearning, Australian Capital Territory Education Directorate

Editor's note: Today’s guest author is Daniel Bray, Program Manager, eLearning, for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Education Directorate. A former teacher, Bray initiated a districtwide digital program, which brought Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education into all Canberra public schools. The “Learn, Anywhere” program has since been recognised at the federal government level as a finalist for the national eGovernment Excellence awards for Project and Program Management. You can read full the full ACT case study here.

I work for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Education Directorate, which serves 45,000 students from preschool through year 12 in the 87 schools comprising the Canberra Public School system. In 2013, the Directorate launched a district wide digital transformation program with the goal of empowering students to "Learn, Anywhere.”
Students at Amaroo School, a 'super' school in the Canberra district, that has classes from Kindergarten to Year 12
While we were thrilled at the prospect of helping students learn both inside and outside of the classroom, making this goal a reality came with it’s own unique set of challenges. Our first step was to bring all of Canberra Public Schools into a single, centralised network. We soon realised that our learning management system didn’t scale, and that many schools’ laptops were beyond obsolete. A group of our students, frustrated with computer log-in times, sent our CIO an assignment that recorded log-in times of up to 7 minutes on multiple laptops. That was one of our 'a-ha' moments, and since then, we've taken every effort to use student feedback to inform our overall program strategy.

When we realized that we needed to overhaul the district’s entire technology infrastructure, Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education (including Google Classroom) stood out as a clear choice for us.
Primary students at Amaroo School collaborating on a class project
Chromebooks were affordable and intuitive; Google Apps would let students work from anywhere, on any device; and Google Classroom would let teachers share assignments, track student progress and grade papers — all without printing a single piece of paper. In 2014, we ran a pilot test with 208 Chromebooks and Google Apps in four primary and secondary schools. During the pilot, the students using Chromebooks and Google Apps experienced super quick logon times and went from 2GB of network storage to enjoying unlimited Google Drive storage. As a Directorate, we couldn’t have been happier with the results: the pilot was a huge success for students, parents and teachers. Most importantly, Google was the choice selected by the schools. Not me. Not the CIO. The schools.

Based on that pilot, in 2015 we decided to roll out Google Apps accounts for all teachers and 32,000 students across the Canberra Public Schools. We also purchased 4,500 Chromebooks (and counting) for schools across the district.

Today, we equip students and teachers with a “Digital Backpack” that comes with Google Classroom and Google Apps, all available in one dashboard. Students get a single login and password for their Google accounts, which stays with them from primary through secondary school.

It’s amazing to watch student learning portfolios grow from year to year. Families can track student development and celebrate achievements, and teachers have a richer, more holistic view of student progress.

By adopting Chromebooks and Google Apps districtwide, we’ve greatly improved the way our students share ideas, give peer feedback and collaborate with each other, in real time. These intuitive and helpful technologies have helped us achieve and exceed our “Learn, Anywhere” vision.

You can read full the full ACT case study here.