Google Classroom now available to all Apps for Education users, adds collaboration features

After announcing a preview of “Google Classroom” back in May, today Google has opened up the tool for educators to all Google Apps for Education users. Classroom offers teachers a slick platform to plan lessons, assignments, and work alongside students, and today Google also announced some new features its implemented on advice from educators that have been previewing the software. Google is adding new collaboration tools that allow teachers to work with students while they work on assignments:

Teachers and students have been instrumental in helping us build Classroom. For example, we heard during the preview that educators don’t want to wait until an assignment is turned in to collaborate with students. Now, with Classroom, teachers can view and comment on students’ work to help them along the way. We’ve also heard that educators want a simple place to post information and materials about their classes, so we added an “About” page for each course, as well.

Google also noted today that it’s had a great response from teachers interested in the platform with around 100,000 educators in 25 countries signed up since the preview launched. “One of the first schools to use Classroom was Fontbonne Hall Academy in Brooklyn, New York. Sister Rosemarie DeLoro, who has been teaching for more than 60 years, had never used computers with her students before Classroom was introduced at her school. Classroom made it easy for her to assign digital worksheets to students in her Italian class and provide direct feedback to help them learn. In fact, after just a few weeks, Sister Rosemarie was showing the other teachers how to use it. “You can’t stay in teaching and keep going to the old ways,” she said.”

Google Classroom is available for all Apps for Education customers starting today in 42 languages including Hebrew, Arabic and Persian. Google said access to all users is rolling out starting today through classroom.google.com.