Google Classroom was released last year as a forum for teachers to host debates, Q&As, and discussions. The software is rolling out updates in time for the new school year, Google announced in a blog post on Monday. Google is hoping that the new features will provide teachers with “more ways to save time, engage [their] students and keep everyone organized.”
One of the new features is an ability to reuse old posts. Teachers can choose from announcements or questions that they have previously posted and simply tweak them, rather than creating each post from scratch.
Google is making its Classroom more collaborative. Teachers can now post a question, video, or article and ask students to write a response; other students can then respond to their peers’ answers, making it a more conducive forum for discussion.
Google Classroom will start to create a Google Calendar for each class, which can be accessed from either Classroom or Calendar. Any assignment with a due date will automatically be added to the calendar, and teachers can manually add other relevant dates.
Other updates include the ability to bump an old post to the top of the stream, post an assignment without a due date, and attach a Google Form to a post, which many teachers utilize for surveys or tests.