As per a recent survey done, schools and universities in about 191 countries have been shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The closure of educational institutions has had a direct impact on around 1.57 billion students. Most of the schools and colleges around the world have decided to avoid disruption in providing education to students by adopting distant learning.
To facilitate this approach of distance learning, Google has come up with a free web service called the Google Classroom. This web service has been developed to help schools in simplifying the process of creating, distributing, and grading the assignments done by children. Google Classroom will soon be upgraded to support ten regional languages which include Telugu, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, and Urdu. In the days to come, Google Classroom aims to support more than 54 languages globally.
Google has also confirmed to introduce new options which will provide students with an upgraded classroom experience. The tech giant will be adding a to-do widget on the Classroom web page for students and a to-review widget concerning academics.
Additional tools will be rolled out for admins who intend to troubleshoot issues related to the Classroom. Admins can also use these tools to attain more knowledge around the usage of Google Classroom.
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Features Coming Soon on Google Classroom:
- Teachers will be able to view student engagement metrics; the stats will help educators in tracking how students have been interacting using Google Classroom daily.
- Google would be enabling seamless integrations with the other learning tools schools are deploying alongside Google’s tools.
- Internet connections can get disruptive when there are power fluctuations. Hence, Google is focussing on updating the Google Classroom mobile apps to function effectively even with intermittent connectivity (offline environment).
- Conducting classes can be tedious and a time-consuming task considering the fact it needs to be done for an entire school system. Therefore, Google is planning to launch integrated tools which will help in creating and managing courses at a large scale.
- Originality reports will be built into Google Classroom as well as assignments; these reports will warn teachers in case there is plagiarism in a student’s work. This originality report will also help students in identifying passages which may require a citation. These reports will be in a downloadable format; teachers can save, print, and share the downloaded reports with their students, parents and administrators.
COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly highlighted the importance of circulating information, especially during a crisis. Since online learning can play a crucial role here, it is up to all of us to explore it to its full potential.
For any clarifications/feedback on the topic, please contact the writer at bhavana.pn@cleartax.in
Bhavana is a Senior Content Writer handling the GST vertical. She is committed, professional, and has a flair for writing. When away from work, she enjoys watching movies and playing with her son. One thing she can’t resist is SHOPPING! Her favourite quote is: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”.
