Since the pandemic and the most recent evolution of ai , Google Classroom has incorporated many new features. Most of them are aimed at helping educators better serve students while using the popular educational tool that turned 10 years old on August 14.
Akshat Sharma, Group Product Manager for Google Classroom, shares his favorite new features and discusses how teachers and/or students can best use them.
As far as ai functions are concerned, these are examined by educators who participate in the Google for Education Pilot Program ai applications.
1. Interactive questions on YouTube
YouTube is incredibly popular with teachers and students, so Sharma and the Google Classroom team are excited about a new capability built into Google Classrooms that allows educators to quickly and easily embed questions on YouTube.
“You can add questions at any time,” Sharma says. These questions can be multiple choice, true or false, or short answer, and can provide instant feedback to students and give teachers data on how they responded.
Popular ai videos also have ai -generated questions automatically added, giving teachers a starting point. “The student will receive real-time feedback and can rewatch segments if they need to in order to arrive at the correct answer,” Sharma says.
2. Read together
Read Along is an ai -powered tutoring product that aims to help students improve their reading skills. “Around 65 percent of students worldwide are unable to read at their grade level,” says Sharma. “We are seriously thinking about how ai can play a major role in supporting students on their reading journey.”
Read Along allows students to read various stories aloud. The tool will highlight the word they are reading and offer computer-generated voice feedback as they go. The tool also encourages student success and gently points out and corrects words they might miss.
“The main idea is that we are making it easier for educators to support each child’s individual reading education through this ai -enabled tutor,” says Sharma. “Students receive real-time feedback as they read aloud, and teachers also receive automated feedback.”
3. Google Classroom Groups
Teachers consistently tell the Google team that they want more opportunities to differentiate student learning, Sharma says. The new groups feature in Google Classroom grew out of that.
“The idea here is that educators can define groups of students within Classroom,” Sharma says. “When they assign any content, they can choose to assign it to any of the groups rather than the entire class. That provides flexibility in how teachers may want to differentiate content. For example, if you have a group of students who are learning English, you may want to provide some specific resources for an assignment. Or you may have a group of students who are still emergent readers and you want to create a read-along version of that assignment.”
The new feature makes it much easier for students to manage a class and assign materials where there is definitely no one-size-fits-all solution.
4. Gemini in the classroom
Gemini, Google's most prominent generative artificial intelligence technology
The tool also has very careful security measures in place. For example, it does not help with grading and is not available to students.
“ai is another tool in the toolbox, but what we’re really trying to do here is make sure that we can address the needs of educators and students,” Sharma says. “Teachers have always wanted to differentiate more in the classroom to meet the needs of different students, but it’s been very difficult for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons has been that curating content, creating content for specific needs has been difficult, but with ai we believe that’s more possible.”
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