Tag Archives: Education

Use your favorite education tools in Classroom with add-ons

We know that educators have go-to digital tools to make their lessons more engaging. But with that comes the challenges of managing multiple accounts and passwords, helping students navigate other websites, and handling grading on different platforms. Now, educators will be able to easily find, add, use and grade content from popular EdTech tools, right within Google Classroom. Add-ons provide a better end-to-end experience to not only save time for educators, but also simplify the digital classroom experience for students, too.

Use popular education tools, right within Classroom

To make EdTech tools work better together, we partnered with 18 partners to offer add-ons for Classroom. You can do things like assign a trivia game from Kahoot!, browse content from IXL’s repository by subject or grade level, and make it easy for students to access interactive Pear Deck presentations, all within Classroom. With the content and activities of these educational partners accessible within Classroom, we hope it’s even easier to diversify your lessons and help students learn in new ways.

  • Animation showing that students can find a Pear Deck presentation from within Classroom, interact with it, then turn it in.

    With just a few clicks, students can access, and turn in, interactive Pear Deck presentations from within Classroom.

  • Animation showing that an educator can use add-ons to create an assignment, browse skills in the IXL add-on by subject or grade level, then add it to an assignment within Classroom.)

    The IXL add-on allows you to browse IXL skills by subject or grade level before adding it to a Classroom Assignment or Stream, and even assign skills to a specific student.

  • Animation showing that teachers can search for kahoots that they have made or save, all within Classroom.

    With the Kahoot! add-on, teachers can access kahoots they made or saved, and make them easy for students to use, all without leaving Classroom.

To start, we’ll have add-ons from Adobe Express for Education, BookWidgets, CK-12, Edpuzzle, Formative, Genially, Google Arts & Culture, Google Play Books, IXL, Kahoot!, Nearpod, Newsela, PBS LearningMedia, Pear Deck, SAFARI Montage, Sora from OverDrive Education, WeVideo and Wordwall. If you don’t see a particular add-on within Classroom, email your admin to ask if your district can set up that add-on, or give feedback within Classroom to request new add-ons partners that aren’t on this list.

A grid of the logos of the new add-ons partners.

Simplify your grading workflows

To make grading easier for educators, many of the add-ons have integrated time-saving features like auto-grading, insights and grade syncing. Various add-ons also provide the opportunity to grade right within Classroom and include personalized feedback when sharing a grade back with students. All add-ons sync with the Classroom gradebook, too.

  • Animation showing the CK-12 add-on and how it enables teachers to view insights and actionable recommendations related to students).

    The CK-12 add-on lets you create interactive assignments, track class performance across assignments, see auto-graded results and view insights that show concept-level performance patterns and actionable recommendations for each student.

  • Animation depicting the Nearpod add-on and how educators can see how much students participated in a lesson and how well they scored on assignments.)

    With the Nearpod add-on, teachers can assign lessons to their class or individual students, review reports of student engagement and activity, and record grades directly within Google Classroom.

  • Animation of the Edpuzzle add-on and how a quiz can be auto-graded because it uses multiple choice questions.)

    Edpuzzle makes it easy to find or create video lessons, measure progress with real-time information on student engagement and comprehension and save time with auto-grading for certain question types.

Our 5 Doodle for Google finalists illustrate self-care

Since we opened up submissions for the 14th annual Doodle for Google student contest, tens of thousands of K-12 students across 54 U.S. states and territories illustrated their answers to the prompt: “I care for myself by…” Our judges were moved by the creative ways in which these young artists shared how they were prioritizing their well-being.

After carefully reviewing each submission, we announced our 54 state and territory winners and opened up public voting on our website. Now, the votes are in, the judges have deliberated and we’re ready to announce our five national finalists for the 2022 Doodle for Google contest!

The finalists were assessed on artistic merit, creativity and how well they addressed the prompt in their artwork and written statements. Each one of them brought intentionality, artistry and heart to their Doodles. Meet our finalists (in age group order):

  • A drawing of a child lying in bed dreaming about outer space, the ocean, tree houses and buildings.
  • A drawing of a family of four in bed together with a quilt that spells out “Google”
  • A drawing of a young girl smelling different dishes including Jollof rice, beef stew, plantains and pounded yam. “Google” is spelled out by the smoke plumes coming from the food.
  • A drawing of two children outdoors enjoying nature with their pet cat and dog.
  • A drawing of a girl tightly hugging her mother in the middle of the word “Google”.

Grades K-3 National Finalist: Edison Lee, Maryland

Title: Dreaming of my bright future

Artist Statement: I care for myself by dreaming of my bright future. In my dreams, I can be anything I want!

Grades 4-5 National Finalist: Anamirel Campos, Delaware

Title: Family will always care for you

Artist Statement: I care for myself by spending time with my family. They taught me many things, but I can't write them all, so I drew them all on a blanket. I love my family!

Grades 6-7 National Finalist: Faridah Ismaila, Pennsylvania

Title: My self love

Artist Statement: I care for myself by making food! I love to make delicious African dishes with my mom. That's why my Doodle shows me smelling all of the delicious African dishes I LOVE!

Grades 8-9 National Finalist: Grace Dai, Missouri

Title: The life-cycle of health

Artist Statement:

I care for myself by being outdoors, especially with family or my sketchbook. My optimism and mental health soars most when I'm outside, because self-care is like nature; they're both beautiful, intricate systems. Like how a bee pollinates a flower, or how the bird hunts the worm, self-care should be as systematic and natural as life itself.

Grades 10-12 National Finalist: Sophie Araque-Liu, Florida

Title: Not alone

Artist Statement: I care for myself by accepting others’ care for me. Often I struggle to shoulder a burden on my own, and forget that I have so many people, like my mom, who care about me and want to help me. Opening up and letting others support me not only relieves my stress — it also lets me tackle things I could never do on my own.

Over the next few weeks, our panel of judges will establish which of our five national finalists will be chosen as the national contest winner. In addition to having their artwork featured on the Google homepage for 24 hours, the winner will receive a $30,000 scholarship and a $50,000 technology package for their school.

Congratulations to our national finalists, and look out for an update on who our 2022 contest winner will be in the next few weeks!

54 Doodle for Google winners showcase self-care

In January, we asked students across the U.S. to submit their ideas for the 14th annual Doodle for Google contest. This year, we invited K-12 students to answer the prompt “I care for myself by…” through their art.

We were amazed by the submissions we received. Across ages, students showcased how they cultivate self-care practices in thoughtful and intentional ways. Young artists shared a range of helpful strategies including spending time in nature, being active, taking part in creative hobbies and spending time with loved ones. Given the challenging nature of the past few years, we were really inspired to see the many ways students have been nurturing their spirits and building resilience.

Today, we’re announcing our 54 state and territory winners. To celebrate their achievements, we sent each of the 54 students Google hardware and swag, and held celebrations in their hometowns to showcase their artwork.

Head to doodle4google.com to see the full gallery of all 54 state and territory winners and vote for your favorite Doodles by July 12th. Your vote helps determine who will go on to become one of our five national finalists — one of whom will become our national winner.

Congratulations again to the 2022 Doodle for Google state and territory winners!

Minerva: Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems with Language Models

Posted by Ethan Dyer and Guy Gur-Ari, Research Scientists, Google Research, Blueshift Team

Language models have demonstrated remarkable performance on a variety of natural language tasks — indeed, a general lesson from many works, including BERT, GPT-3, Gopher, and PaLM, has been that neural networks trained on diverse data at large scale in an unsupervised way can perform well on a variety of tasks.

Quantitative reasoning is one area in which language models still fall far short of human-level performance. Solving mathematical and scientific questions requires a combination of skills, including correctly parsing a question with natural language and mathematical notation, recalling relevant formulas and constants, and generating step-by-step solutions involving numerical calculations and symbolic manipulation. Due to these challenges, it is often believed that solving quantitative reasoning problems using machine learning will require significant advancements in model architecture and training techniques, granting models access to external tools such as Python interpreters, or possibly a more profound paradigm shift.

In “Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems With Language Models” (to be released soon on the arXiv), we present Minerva, a language model capable of solving mathematical and scientific questions using step-by-step reasoning. We show that by focusing on collecting training data that is relevant for quantitative reasoning problems, training models at scale, and employing best-in-class inference techniques, we achieve significant performance gains on a variety of difficult quantitative reasoning tasks. Minerva solves such problems by generating solutions that include numerical calculations and symbolic manipulation without relying on external tools such as a calculator. The model parses and answers mathematical questions using a mix of natural language and mathematical notation. Minerva combines several techniques, including few-shot prompting, chain of thought or scratchpad prompting, and majority voting, to achieve state-of-the-art performance on STEM reasoning tasks. You can explore Minerva’s output with our interactive sample explorer!

Solving a multi-step problem: A question from the MATH dataset and Minerva’s solution. The model writes down a line equation, simplifies it, substitutes a variable, and solves for y.

A Model Built for Multi-step Quantitative Reasoning
To promote quantitative reasoning, Minerva builds on the Pathways Language Model (PaLM), with further training on a 118GB dataset of scientific papers from the arXiv preprint server and web pages that contain mathematical expressions using LaTeX, MathJax, or other mathematical typesetting formats. Standard text cleaning procedures often remove symbols and formatting that are essential to the semantic meaning of mathematical expressions. By maintaining this information in the training data, the model learns to converse using standard mathematical notation.

Example questions from the Joint Entrance Examination Main Math 2020 exam taken each year by almost 2M Indian high-school students intended to study engineering and similar fields (left), and the National Math Exam in Poland (May 2022) taken by approximately 270K high-school students every year (right).
A dataset for quantitative reasoning: Careful data processing preserves mathematical information, allowing the model to learn mathematics at a higher level.

Minerva also incorporates recent prompting and evaluation techniques to better solve mathematical questions. These include chain of thought or scratchpad prompting — where Minerva is prompted with several step-by-step solutions to existing questions before being presented with a new question — and majority voting. Like most language models, Minerva assigns probabilities to different possible outputs. When answering a question, rather than taking the single solution Minerva scores as most likely, multiple solutions are generated by sampling stochastically from all possible outputs. These solutions are different (e.g., the steps are not identical), but often arrive at the same final answer. Minerva uses majority voting on these sampled solutions, taking the most common result as the conclusive final answer.

Majority voting: Minerva generates multiple solutions to each question and chooses the most common answer as the solution, improving performance significantly.

Evaluation on STEM Benchmarks
To test Minerva’s quantitative reasoning abilities we evaluated the model on STEM benchmarks ranging in difficulty from grade school level problems to graduate level coursework.

  • MATH: High school math competition level problems
  • MMLU-STEM: A subset of the Massive Multitask Language Understanding benchmark focused on STEM, covering topics such as engineering, chemistry, math, and physics at high school and college level.
  • GSM8k: Grade school level math problems involving basic arithmetic operations that should all be solvable by a talented middle school student.

We also evaluated Minerva on OCWCourses, a collection of college and graduate level problems covering a variety of STEM topics such as solid state chemistry, astronomy, differential equations, and special relativity that we collected from MIT OpenCourseWare.

In all cases, Minerva obtains state-of-the-art results, sometimes by a wide margin.

Evaluation results on MATH and MMLU-STEM, which include high school and college level questions covering a range of STEM topics.
Model   MATH     MMLU-STEM     OCWCourses     GSM8k  
Minerva 50.3% 75% 30.8% 78.5%
Published state of the art    6.9% 55% - 74.4%
Minerva 540B significantly improves state-of-the-art performance on STEM evaluation datasets.

What Minerva Gets Wrong
Minerva still makes its fair share of mistakes. To better identify areas where the model can be improved, we analyzed a sample of questions the model gets wrong, and found that most mistakes are easily interpretable. About half are calculation mistakes, and the other half are reasoning errors, where the solution steps do not follow a logical chain of thought.

It is also possible for the model to arrive at a correct final answer but with faulty reasoning. We call such cases “false positives”, as they erroneously count toward a model’s overall performance score. In our analysis, we find that the rate of false positives is relatively low (Minerva 62B produces less than 8% false positives on MATH).

Below are a couple of example mistakes the model makes.

Calculation mistake: The model incorrectly cancels the square root on both sides of the equation.
Reasoning mistake: The model computes the number of free throws at the fourth practice, but then uses this number as the final answer for the first practice.

Limitations
Our approach to quantitative reasoning is not grounded in formal mathematics. Minerva parses questions and generates answers using a mix of natural language and LaTeX mathematical expressions, with no explicit underlying mathematical structure. This approach has an important limitation, in that the model’s answers cannot be automatically verified. Even when the final answer is known and can be verified, the model can arrive at a correct final answer using incorrect reasoning steps, which cannot be automatically detected. This limitation is not present in formal methods for theorem proving (e.g., see Coq, Isabelle, HOL, Lean, Metamath, and Mizar). On the other hand, an advantage of the informal approach is that it can be applied to a highly diverse set of problems which may not lend themselves to formalization.

Future Directions
While machine learning models have become impressive tools in many scientific disciplines, they are often narrowly scoped to solve specific tasks. We hope that general models capable of solving quantitative reasoning problems will help push the frontiers of science and education. Models capable of quantitative reasoning have many potential applications, including serving as useful aids for researchers, and enabling new learning opportunities for students. We present Minerva as a small step in this direction. To see more samples from Minerva, such as the one below, please visit the interactive sample explorer!

Solving a problem using calculus and trigonoometry: A question from the MATH dataset asking for the speed of a particle in circular motion. Minerva finds a correct step-by-step solution. In the process, Minerva computes a time derivative and applies a trigonometric identity.

Acknowledgements
Minerva was a collaborative effort that spanned multiple teams in Google Research. We would like to thank our coauthors Aitor Lewkowycz, Ambrose Slone, Anders Andreassen, Behnam Neyshabur, Cem Anil, David Dohan, Henryk Michalewski, Imanol Schlag, Theo Gutman-Solo, Vedant Misra, Vinay Ramasesh, and Yuhuai Wu, as well as our collaborators Erik Zelikman and Yasaman Razeghi. Minerva builds upon the work of many others at Google, and we would like to thank the PaLM team, the T5X team, the Flaxformer team, and the JAX team for their efforts. We thank Tom Small for designing the animation in this post. We would also like to especially thank Vedant Misra for developing the Minerva sample explorer.

Source: Google AI Blog


Join Kick Start, a coding competition for all levels

Kick Start, one of Google’s Coding Competitions, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this season! Open to all skill levels, Kick Start gives beginner to advanced coders the chance to develop their skills and learn more about competitive programming through algorithmic and mathematical challenges designed by Google engineers.

Kick Start’s 2022 season is officially underway. Rounds take place throughout the year, so you can join in on the fun whenever it’s convenient for you. Check out the full schedule and register today.

Hone your skills with Coding Practice with Kick Start

In addition to Kick Start’s eight online rounds, we’re also hosting several Coding Practice with Kick Start rounds this season. These four-day sessions remove the time constraints and scoreboard, so you can take your time working through problems and get some extra practice without pressure. You’ll receive dedicated Googler support and detailed walkthrough videos to help you level up and prepare for the next Kick Start round. Our next Coding Practice with Kick Start round takes place from June 27 to July 1 — add the session to your calendar so you don’t miss out.

Still deciding if Kick Start is the right fit for you? We sat down with a few members of the team behind Coding Practice with Kick Start to learn more about the competition and why it’s valuable for coders of all levels.

And here’s what some of our participants had to say about their experiences:

“Coding Practice with Kick Start helped me learn about the different types of competitive programming problems. And since we had more time, I could work on fixing my common mistakes, like not reading the problem statement carefully on the first pass. The problem walkthroughs were also very helpful, and I’m glad I can revisit them when I have a little more time.”

“I really liked that Coding Practice with Kick Start gave me an entire week to complete problems at my own pace. It helped lower the barrier of entry for me, since I've never participated in an online coding competition before and I was hesitant to sign up at first. Theintroduction session also clearly explained the format of the official Kick Start rounds, giving me a good sense of what I was walking into and the types of problems I would need to solve.”

You can participate in any Coding Practice with Kick Start session and official Kick Start round — so why not give them all a try? Head to g.co/kickstart and register today. We hope you’ll join us June 27 - July 1 to kick start your coding competition journey!

The Anywhere School 2022

Editor’s Note: Join us for Google for Education’s product launch event, The Anywhere School 2022, to find out about the latest features to help students pursue their personal potential.

Each year, my team and I speak with thousands of educators around the world to better understand how students and teachers are using technology in the classroom. We do this to help educators amplify their efforts and, most importantly, help students pursue their personal potential. Today, we’re sharing new updates to Chromebooks, Google Classroom and Google Meet to set up teachers and students for success ahead of the next school year.

Create screencasts and cast to a big screen with Chromebooks

From sharing devices to 1:1, to teachers using Chromebooks alongside students, we’re constantly evolving our features to meet the needs of the classroom. We’re adding new features like the Screencast app, built into Chrome OS in M103, where you can record, trim, share and view transcribed screencasts — and create a custom library of videos automatically saved in Google Drive. Cast moderator is a new mode coming to select devices with Google TV that enables both educators and students to wirelessly share their Chromebook screen to a class display using an access code, so that only folks in the same classroom as the display are able to cast. To get notified on availability of cast moderator hardware, express interest in this form. And for more on what’s new for Chromebooks, read our blog.

YouTube video of Screencast on Chromebooks
10:25

Adaptive learning enhancements in Google Classroom

We’re rolling out newintegrations and tools to improve teachers’ day-to-day tasks and help students grow their skills. Practice sets lean into adaptive learning by giving students instant feedback on their answers and real-time support if they get stuck — providing automated insights for teachers to identify potential gaps in students’ understanding. Practice sets are now globally available in beta, and in English only, for Google Workspace for Education customers with the Education Plus or the Teaching and Learning Editions. Sign up here to get access. With add-ons, we’re making it possible for students and teachers to access more than 15 EdTech tools, like Kahoot! and Pear Deck, all with a single login. Teachers can create engaging assignments and see new grading experiences, while students don’t have to worry about remembering extra passwords and navigating external websites. Add-ons will be available with the Education Plus or Teaching and Learning Edition. And to get ready for the new school year or semester, we’re expanding our roster import feature in Google Workspace for Education Plus to an additional 15 countries, in partnership with Elevate Data Sync, so class lists can automatically be synced with student information systems. Sign up here for the beta. For more on what’s new with Classroom, read our blog.

YouTube video of practice sets in Google Classroom
10:25

Better interconnectivity and efficiency with Google Meet

For those using the Google Workspace for Education Teaching & Learning and Plus editions, we’re adding features focused on increasing interconnectivity, control and efficiency in the classroom to Google Meet. Now, Meet calls can be auto-transcribed directly into a Google Doc for easy lesson reviews and the ability to search for keywords and concepts. Ever wished you could keep tabs on your class and present from another tab? Now you can, with Picture in Picture in Meet, where you can navigate other tabs in Chrome while viewing 4 tiles of students in a Meet call. And to keep your class engaged and regularly check for understanding, you can now add polls and Q&A to Live-streams, and live-stream directly to YouTube. For more on what’s new with Google Meet, read our blog.

Gif of picture in picture in Google Meet on Chrome OS

Building for the future of more personal learning experiences

We want to continue developing products and features that meet the needs of students and teachers today, and in the future. The magic happens when tech is put in the hands of teachers who know how to engage students, to challenge them and instill that love of learning. Education is not one size fits all — and neither is the technology that powers education.

New Workspace for Education tools to enhance learning

Editor’s Note: Join us for Google for Education’s product launch event, The Anywhere School 2022, to find out about the latest features to help students pursue their personal potential.

Whether learning takes place in the classroom, or virtually on Google Meet, control remains paramount. It’s also important to enhance educational tools that help take teaching and learning further for every educator and student. Today we’re announcing several new Google Workspace for Education tools rooted in enhancing learning for the individual and classroom, giving educators more control and increasing support for diverse learners.

Enrich teaching and learning experiences for all types of learners

No one student experience is the same, so it’s a key priority for us to ensure the entire learning environment is enhanced. Earlier this year, we announced many features in Docs, like Assistive Writing features and the ability to use Meet directly in Docs, Sheets and Slides. For our Google Workspace for Education Plus and Teaching and Learning Upgrade customers, we announced live-translated captions in Meet, which allows hosts to add live-translated captions to support video meetings for language classes, multilingual audiences and even parent/guardian teacher conferences.

Today, we’re adding even more features to make Meet useful in the classroom. which are all available in Google Workspace for Education Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade:

  • Host Q&As and Polls in live stream: Users in a livestream later this year can participate in Q&As and polls, matching the experience Meet attendees enjoy today.
  • Auto-transcribe Meet calls directly into a Google Doc: Keep a record of meetings with less storage than a recording and provide an easier way to edit, review, search and share lessons with students.
  • Live stream public events directly to YouTube: Live stream Meet video calls to the public via YouTube for events like school board meetings, school assemblies and much more.
  • Animated image of joining a Meet call directly from Google Docs.

    Join a Meet call directly from Google Docs.

  • Image of a PTA meeting in Google Meet showing how to turn the feature on to stream directly to YouTube through Google Meet.

    Stream directly to YouTube through Google Meet.

  • Image of students in a meet call and the feature to turn on auto-transcribe within Google Meet.

    Turn on auto-transcribe within Google Meet.

We’ve also made significant updates to Originality Reports in both Classroom and Assignments. Schools using Education Plus or the Teaching and Learning Upgrade can soon analyze Microsoft Word documents and backfill their private, school-owned repository with previous student classwork so teachers can compare student-to-student matches, in addition to hundreds of billions of web pages and over 40 million books. Also, starting today, originality reports can run reports in more languages including Dutch, Thai and Tagalog.

Increased controls and safety

We’re adding new Meet features to make sure you have control and can manage your class:

  • Additional Meet controls: Admins can now control whether users in their organization can share their screen and use polls, Q&As, and whiteboarding to reduce student distractions and allow only teachers to use these settings.
  • Picture-in-Picture: To be able to see and manage your class while presenting, we added Picture-in-Picture in Google Meet. Hosts can now see up to four meeting participants while presenting and navigating different tabs and windows, when running Meet on Chrome browsers.
Animated image of a Google Meet call and how to turn on the Picture-in-Picture feature to navigate to another tab while also seeing participants in Meet.

Building more inclusive learning environments

We believe in building with and for people with disabilities, and one of the ways we do that is by building accessibility features directly into our products.

  • Individualized accessibility preferences: Previously, these preferences were shared across all Workspace tools, meaning users needed to continuously turn them on and off. Now, accessibility features, like high contrast mode, will automatically work in Docs, Sheets and Slides, without needing to turn on an Editor-specific preference.
  • Alt-text in Gmail: You can now add alt-text to your images in Gmail. This allows people to add context for an image, making it accessible for people using screen readers and helping them better understand exactly what is being shared.

With these improvements, we aim to change the way the classroom is connected, with the ability to teach across various learners’ needs. We look forward to another upcoming school year that is more connected and more personalized, regardless of where learning is taking place.

Adapting products to meet teachers’ changing needs

Editor’s Note: Join us for Google for Education’s product launch event, The Anywhere School 2022, to find out about the latest features to help students pursue their personal potential.

As we build our products, it’s essential to listen to user feedback. That’s how we help make them useful for the people using them — and more inclusive, too. Our Google for Education team has a long history of directly involving schools in user research studies to better understand what they need. This connection to educators and students has made it easier to adapt our products as schools’ unique needs change over time. Here’s how we’ve done just that.

Making virtual teaching more engaging with Google Meet

In 2020, the instructional demands on teachers radically changed overnight, prompting many teachers to use Google Meet to host their virtual classrooms. But Google Meet was originally designed for businesses — not classrooms — and the product was not meeting the needs of educators, students or their parents and guardians.

“Students are using the tools in a way that makes it hard for teachers to do their job,” a tech admin based in the U.S. told us. “Teachers can’t mute students, or put them in groups, they can’t ask questions easily to take the temperature of the class. Students are also jumping on the video without supervision – and that’s an issue. I wish there was more control.”

To improve the experience, the Google Meet team worked quickly to figure out what teachers did need from the product, and spent a lot of time learning from teachers directly. The team was able to incorporate this feedback into the product design, resulting in new functionality like attendance taking, hand raising, waiting rooms and polls. “With the upgraded Meet experience, I find it very practical and friendly to manage the class and communicate with the students,” a high school teacher in Mexico told us, “obviously improving the overall experience for students.”

image of teacher working with Googler and providing feedback

The Google for Education team working in schools to gather user research.

Google Meet became a core piece of the virtual classroom, better connecting teachers with their students and reducing the stress of managing the new remote environment. And these changes ultimately benefited everyone interacting with Google Meet, including businesses and those using it for personal use.

Gif of using polls in Google Meet

Making Classroom work for limited device access or Wi-Fi connectivity

We took a similar approach to improving the user experience of Google Classroom by adding features to help close access gaps. Educators noted that in areas where students didn’t have computer or tablet access, students were completing homework by hand and submitting photos of their work with a mobile device. But Google Classroom did not have the functionality to grade photos. The team took that feedback, and a new feature was added that let teachers interact with students’ submitted photos, ensuring greater access to learning across more types of devices.

Teachers from around the world also told us that because Google Classroom access was only available with Wi-Fi, this increased learning barriers in countries with limited Wi-Fi access on phones, especially when adding more data costs money. So we made some features of Google Classroom available offline for Android devices, like reviewing class announcements and assignments, editing downloaded assignment attachments and managing offline files. “Over 20% of our students do not have access to the internet at home,” a superintendent in the U.S. told us. “We needed a way to provide access to their work. The offline feature allowed that for students.”

One other improvement benefited all teachers who use Google Classroom across multiple classes. The team quickly prioritized building features to resolve this issue, saving teachers’ (very precious!) time and energy.

Help shape the future of Google products

User feedback is critical to ensure we continue building more inclusive and helpful products – and focusing on the features that teachers need and want most. When communities are sharing their experiences with Google, we have a better understanding of how to adapt to their needs. If you would like to start sharing feedback with us, here’s a few ways to get started:

Google Classroom: Making your favorite educational tools work better together

Editor’s Note: Join us for Google for Education’s product launch event, The Anywhere School 2022, to find out about the latest features to help students pursue their personal potential.

For educators, there are always a few top of mind questions: how can they optimize their time and find ways to help each student learn effectively? With Classroom, we’re working to help solve these problems so educators can focus more on teaching and students can experience new approaches to make learning more personal.

We’re announcing new features to help tackle complex challenges, like supporting individualized learning at scale. We’re also developing deeper integrations with key tools that educators and administrators use on a day-to-day basis, making everyday tasks, like grading, creating assignments, and managing class lists easier.

Practice makes progress

Built with adaptive learning technology, practice sets is a new feature in Google Classroom that enables teachers to transform their existing content into interactive assignments. When working on an assignment, students receive instant feedback on their answers, and real-time support through visual explainers and videos if they get stuck along the way. For teachers, once they set up their initial questions, practice sets provide automated grading and insights to help them quickly identify gaps in students’ understanding so they can shape future lessons. Practice sets will be globally available in beta, and in English only, for Google Workspace for Education customers with Education Plus or the Teaching and Learning Upgrade. If you’re interested in trying out the beta, express interest here.

Video of digital illustrations showcasing the new adaptive learning feature called practice sets
10:25

Create interactive lessons and simplify grading with your favorite EdTech tools (coming soon)

With Classroom add-ons, teachers and students can soon access custom learning and grading experiences from more than 15 EdTech favorites including IXL, Pear Deck, Kahoot! and Nearpod. They can sign into Classroom and each add-on with the same login, removing the need to remember multiple passwords or to navigate to multiple websites to access classwork. Teachers can more easily review student work with the Classroom grader view and grades will automatically transfer to the Classroom gradebook.

In the coming months, we’ll be rolling out this feature to Classroom users with Google for Education Plus or the Teaching and Learning Upgrade. Admins will be able to choose which add-ons they enable for their schools. Subscribe to the Google for Education newsletter to get notified when this feature is available.

With the IXL add-on, browse content by skill level or subject, then preview the skill before attaching to an assignment.

Set up classes automatically with expanded SIS syncing

Last year, in partnership with Clever, we added the ability to sync the rosters from your student information system (SIS) to Classroom, so classes could be automatically created and updated. Soon, we’ll be expanding to 15 more countries with the help of SIS integration expert, Elevate Data Sync. Admins can sync class lists and timetables directly with most major student information systems, removing the need for teachers to set up their courses manually. Now, they can just click “accept” when their course is created. Schools with Education Plus that are interested in trying this out with Elevate Data Sync can sign up for the beta today.

Animation showing student rosters syncing and updating.

Admins can sync class lists directly with most major student information systems. Teachers can just click “accept” when their course is created

Prioritizing your top requests

We spend a lot of time with teachers and schools to make sure we’re developing new features and products that help with what they need most. We read every piece of feedback that is shared, anduse that information to prioritize top feature requests. Here are some of the latest improvements:

  • YouTube in Google Classroom: It’s now easier to find, evaluate, and add YouTube videos into your lessons from Classroom with larger thumbnail images and the ability to filter videos by duration. And when you or your students are watching a video, you’ll see a larger video player.
  • Grade export: We’ve added action-oriented messages that guide teachers as they sync grades with their SIS.
  • Notifications: Our notification emails are getting a refresh, so teachers and students can quickly scan emails and find key information. Later this year, teachers will even be able to reply to students from within their email notifications in Gmail. And for those of you who access Google Classroom on your mobile device, we're adding email settings functionality – so that everyone can now tailor notification settings for both email and push notifications.
Animation showing a teacher responding to a student’s comment, right from within Gmail.

Reply to students' comments, right from within Gmail.

In interviews with dozens of education leaders, we’ve heard three main themes: You need better visibility, deeper insights, and ways to support teachers at scale. We’re working on several new features, built specifically for education leaders, that will address these needs. Stay tuned for the chance to join our alpha and beta pilots, and expect lots more updates about how we’re empowering education leaders to achieve their goals and drive instructional impact.

We know that training helps build confidence when using new tools in the Classroom. Whether you’re just starting out or exploring advanced features, we have three new video-based trainings covering features that help simplify class management and accelerate grading, and lessons for students too. You can easily find all of these new lessons (available in English), and more training and instructional resources, on the Applied Digital Skills website (available now) or the Teacher Center (available later this month).

Ready to shape the future of our products? Sign up for our Google for Education Pilot Program, which is available globally.

Share your ideas with Chromebook

Editor’s Note: Join us for Google for Education’s product launch event, The Anywhere School 2022, to find out about the latest features to help students pursue their personal potential.

Over the last two years, many school districts have gone from sharing devices to providing one for every student. Students aren’t the only ones getting devices, either - teachers are, too. We’ve talked to a lot of teachers to see what tools they might be missing on their devices so we can design new tools to make key workflows easier, and provide students with even richer learning experiences.

We heard loud and clear that returning to the classroom this year after remote learning, many educators are now using computers not just to prep for class, but also to teach in real time. Having a lightweight convertible Chromebook with a stylus and all-day battery life allows them to step away from their desks and move freely about the classroom to engage with students. And with so many schools moving toward a 1:1 student to device ratio, students are taking their Chromebooks home in backpacks to work on homework; this gives them unprecedented access to digital tools both in school and at home. With that, video has quickly become both a critical teaching tool and a powerful way for students to show their work. So for this back to school season, we've built new ways for both students and teachers to share and record their screens for real-time collaboration in the classroom and creating instructional videos and reports.

Share your ideas with Screencast

Make video creation capabilities available to everyone in your class with the Screencast app built into Chrome OS. Educators can record, trim, transcribe and share lessons or demos to build a custom library of recordings. Students can create their own screencasts to share their ideas and what they’ve learned, or access lessons if they missed a class or need homework help. You can even draw or write on the screen using a touchscreen or stylus to diagram or illustrate key concepts. Recordings are stored on Google Drive, and can be accessed via link to the Screencast app – at school or from home. Update Chrome OS to M103 to get access.

YouTube video of Screencast on Chromebooks
10:25

Secure, wireless casting for the entire class with cast moderator

Share ideas and content wirelessly with a moderator mode for casting that lets educators control casting in their classrooms. Cast moderator lets educators and students share their screen, whether sharing a presentation, a video or a worksheet, wirelessly to a central display, using a secure access code. Educators can keep class on track by controlling when the code gets displayed and instantly turning off a disruptive cast in their classroom with the click of a remote or from the teacher’s own Chromebook. With cast moderator, all educators need is a cast sender, like a Chromebook or a desktop Chrome browser, and a supported Google TV device as a cast receiver. We’re piloting this with schools this summer, so to get notified about availability, express interest through our form.

YouTube video of cast moderator
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Working with Figma to optimize for Chromebooks

Our team aims to give students access to the tools they need to build key skills and creatively express their ideas on Chromebooks. We’re working with developers like Figma, the leading browser-based collaborative design software, to optimize their products for Chromebooks and run pilots in real classrooms. Through this partnership, we hope to equip students with the visual communication, problem-solving and collaboration skills they need to thrive in a digital-first world. We’re announcing a free Figma beta for U.S. high schools using Chromebooks. Now you can deploy Figma and manage free app licenses all from Google Admin Console, making it easy to deliver to many people at once. Starting today, you canapply to participate in the Figma beta, which launches later this summer.

YouTube video of Figma partnership with Chromebooks
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Find the right Chromebook for you (and your school!)

Whether you’re looking for Chromebooks for high schoolers or for educators, or for yourself, you can find recommendations onour website, along with accessories that are Works with Chromebook certified, like styluses from Logitech. You can learn how to set up a Chromebook repair program in your school, with device-specific resources from Acer and Lenovo. Or if you have old Macs and PCs sitting around, you can repurpose them with Chrome OS Flex, a new version of Chrome OS that can help extend the lifespan of your devices.

Building for the future of teaching and learning

We’re excited to see how educators are using Chromebooks to expand their teaching. Chris Preston, an honors biology teacher at Rider High School in Wichita Falls ISD, is among the teachers who rely on Chromebooks for teaching. “As a teacher, I’m always looking for ways to save time, and my Chromebook is the ultimate time saver,” Chris says. “I actively share my experiences with my Chromebook with fellow educators because Chromebooks have changed the way I work. I want others to have that same opportunity.” And now, with Screencast and cast moderator, we hope educators around the world feel the same way.