Google Classroom

http://www.google.com/edu/classroom/

by phonos • 12 years ago

90 63 12 years ago

aw3c22• 12 years ago

All this could be done by a local server at the school without providing all the data and information to Google. If Google was altruistic, they would provide the software and technical guidance to do so.

weavie• 12 years ago

That would probably cost them a lot more than just setting aside a few of their servers (of which they have millions) to be used by schools.

What they are doing here is utilizing resources that they already have, so low cost to them. These kids will then grow up using Google apps and many will likely continue to do so outside of school.

noisy_boy• 12 years ago

Unfortunately the trend across the world in education is to cut costs (typically at grave cost to students, no pun intended). Privacy concerns aside, this has the following advantages for the school (I write school from the point of view of smaller educational institutions where this is likely to make a bigger impact and has better chances of adoption):

- Cost (sometimes this trumps everything)

- Ease of use for teachers (automatic generation of assignment etc. means lesser work for teachers)

- Availability anywhere; typically teachers take work home and this means they can have it available outside the school servers

- No need to worry about backups etc. Also easier lookup/search (which is Google's strength) e.g. for older assignments instead of trawling through old folders

For Google: like every company they want to get their users when they are young since that means a lifetime of usage once they get used/comfortable/dependent to/with/on it. Nothing is better than capturing minds when they are in school when young people are forming their habits which will last for a lifetime. This was also seen in banking industry when some banks introduced kids's saving account etc (not saying learning to save when you are young is a bad thing).

jimhefferon• 12 years ago

Where I am (typical US place) no one at any school, elementary, middle, or high school (including the IT people), has the technical sophistication to responsibly administer local servers, or is remotely interested in gaining it.

ronaldx• 12 years ago

Generally in the UK, IT teachers are hired primarily for the ability to act as a sysadmin and tech support (for the whole school) - and are frequently called away to fix the principal's printer, as a facetious example.

The content of high school computer science courses is significantly influenced by this: the preference is for admin-heavy or Microsoft-heavy courses, which can be easily covered by non-specialist staff, and traditionally feature zero programming skills.

This is changing, but in my opinion teaching in computer science field is still impeded by teachers needing to be sysadmins first.

nemothekid• 12 years ago

If you think thats possible, you should be altruistic and apply for a job at your local school district to work at below market rates for people who don't understand your job and will always see you as a cost center and/or tech support.

Everything dropbox does can be done by a local server, and is already easy (ownCloud, BitTorrent Sync), but there is a reason why Dropbox is still doing so well. It would be thoughtful to figure out why consumer facing companies who manage everything are doing so well, before assuming overloading an already underpaid, understaffed, and sometimes underqualified IT staff with more software, hardware and ops is "altruistic"

aw3c22• 12 years ago

I am not a multi-billion company. If I had free time and such resources, I would love doing something like that.

buro9• 12 years ago

I asked my partner what she thought of this as she is a tenured lecturer at a Russell Group university.

Her view is that they would not only not be able to use this (politically they feel the need to have everything in the UK) but that there was a preference to support a universal framework that they had full control over.

Specifically her university (Exeter) uses a version of Moodle: https://moodle.org/

That said, I think for smaller schools and less well-funded universities that do not have the means or expertise to run something like Moodle themselves, Google Classroom is going to be great.

UK-AL• 12 years ago

Moodle is used everywhere in the UK, FE Colleges, Sixth Form etc.

However students hate it, mainly because its not very good.

zarify2• 12 years ago

Really? I have used Moodle extensively both in my own courses (at a high school level) and in my own studies at university. I have had very little negative feedback from students, nor have I observed much difficulty in using it.

Trezoid• 12 years ago

It's used extensively in Australia too, and having recently gone through an university that uses it extensively for assignment submissions, out of class "discussions", and a few other things, and it's a terrible, broken platform.

The primary thing I was forced to use it for was assignment submission, which was primarily collections of source-code, compiled binaries and reports on them,so nothing overly large, though generally larger than the single word document I suspect the uploader was designed for, and it was horrible.

If your connection was somewhat poor the uploads sometimes randomly failed either reporting success or not reporting anything at all, sometimes it took hours to upload small files, and frequently you had to use chrome to upload, as the firefox uploader would simply fail. Even uploading from the university campus, from the same building the servers were hosted in the upload process was frequently so risky that some lecturers asked for the submission of source code in physical copies, as well as the digital submission, to ensure something got submitted they could look at.

I'd love for something better built to take over, but given how dominant moodle is in the market, I can't see it being shifted any time soon.

Already__Taken2• 12 years ago

Moodle may be ok or it may suck. The problem is many of us in the UK stopped getting updates. Any software without updates is going the completely suck.

Lots of schools have been left with 1.9

vertex-four• 12 years ago

The Open University have a ridiculously customised version of Moodle that's amazing. Other than that, both Moodle and Blackboard are awful.

ankitml2• 12 years ago

Students, teachers and administrators everyone hates it. Though I would say this is partly because teachers and administrators arent trained properly.

I agree it does have a UI which dates back a decade and consequently not a very good UX, However moodle HQ is well aware of this problem and I expect them to crank out better UI/UX in newer versions. The lack of training aspect, I am not sure how much are they serious in tackling.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

mncolinlee2• 12 years ago

Ask teachers. Moodle is dreadful. It's just waiting for a decent competitor to come and disrupt it.

jestinjoy12• 12 years ago

I use Moodle. I dont think "Moodle is dreadful". The features provided by Moodle is unmatched. For some time I used Google course builder. For me it was a total failure. Google product means everything in Googles hand. Moodle provides power to the people. Once learned, Moodle is easy to use.

dublinben• 12 years ago

Have you tried Sakai? It's a free software course management system that' been around for several years, and is much better than Blackboard et. al. It's already being used by several hundred schools, like Duke University, several UCs, Rice University, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakai_Project

ivan_ah2• 12 years ago

I wonder if backboard will try to sue google like they sue everyone else based on their "Internet-based education support system" patent[1].

Watching tech is like watching the nature channel---now the bigger beast (big g) goes to bite into the market while the hyenas (bb lawyers) backs off to the side of the scene.

[1] http://www.google.com/patents/US6988138, mo info: http://www.downes.ca/blackboard_patent.htm

DodgyEggplant2• 12 years ago

Another product without support, without someone to call if things don't work, or worse: your classroom was banned (e.g., a student tried to mess with it). The model were your work, organisation and critical data relies on a no support platform can not work.

praptak• 12 years ago

Looks like a part of Google Apps for Education, a paid product that does have phone support.

VLM2• 12 years ago

"critical data"

There is no critical data in a grade school, like my kids school which uses GAE, and presumably will use this workforce automation stuff that appears to live on top of GAE. Even in high school or university, there just isn't "critical data".

Also classrooms don't rely on much other than the roof and HVAC. In practice, when the internet is down, the kids just do something else.

DodgyEggplant2• 12 years ago

Critical, IMHO, is not "critical to man kind" but "critical to the organisation that uses the data". We should ask a teacher that his/her class was banned, all access is blocked and he/she finds out that there is nobody to talk to, and he/she must find this cousin who's friend worked for google last year maybe they can help to reach out somebody.

kaitai2• 12 years ago

This is not just for grade school, though.

If my grade files disappear from the cloud repository in which I've tucked them away, and I failed to make backup copies, then I am in REAL TROUBLE. Have you ever felt the panic that arises when you realized you turned back everyone's assignment and didn't record the grades?! Or maybe your class management system somehow lost all the grades for the semester?

The kids in grade school might do something else, but the freshmen gunning for b-school will tear you limb from limb!

Shooti• 12 years ago

http://contact.googleapps.com/

Donzo• 12 years ago

Currently, this seems like more of a way to leverage Google Drive abilities for classroom use than anything else.

As an exteacher who used Google Drive in the classroom, I'm sure the extra folder and file management features will be liked by users.

Nothing clogs up your drive like receiving 100 shitty persuasive essays at a time.

georgedrummond• 12 years ago

More teaching, less tech-ing

Horrible copy

Filligree• 12 years ago

It struck just the right tone with me. These systems are supposed to save time, but they usually don't.

If it'll just get out of the way and let people work, I think Google might have a winner.

elemos• 12 years ago

Following the Microsoft model. Give out software/hardware at low to no cost for educational purposes. Those applications become ingrained and it makes it that much easier to gain and keep market dominance in the future.

watwut• 12 years ago

When people complain about being tracked by Google and loosing privacy, they get told that they should simply not use it. If Google Classroom is used, students/parents are effectively given no choice in the matter.

If the Google decides to ban students gmail account (because students name does not sound real enough or without explanation), the student is f-ed.

But mostly, my primary reason why not to use it in school would be that you never know whether Google close the project next year or not.

madeofpalk• 12 years ago

If the Google decides to ban students gmail account (because students name does not sound real enough or without explanation), the student is f-ed.

Are you suggesting that my about@mycompany.com email address could be blocked because 'about' isnt a real name?

Google has never banned hosted gmail acccounts, and I can't see how or why it would.

presootto• 12 years ago

The privacy concern is a very real one. Also, see: http://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/84829703425/r...

esteer• 12 years ago

This was the exact same idea that I submitted for Google Cloud Developer Challenge in last November. I could not finish the app in time because of my exams and followed by my internship. I'm not sure if this is their original idea or they've read my application. Is there anything I can do about it? Even if I can't, this just boosted my confidence on my startup ideas.

jmathai• 12 years ago

Google has been adding services for schools for a few years. They announced Google Play for schools at an IO a year it two ago.

moeedm• 12 years ago

What will happen when Google stops giving a shit in a year?

joekrill3• 12 years ago

This is my real worry with any Google product these days. I know most people think it's a played out reaction, but it's a very real concern, especially for something like this that requires a real commitment -- this isn't just me losing my Google Reader app.

_zen• 12 years ago

EdTech is booming, and there is a lot of money to be made. Google Apps for Business is booming. Google Apps for Education, likewise, will boom in the same way.

If you seriously think Google Drive or a Google Docs is going anywhere because your precious Google Reader disappeared, you're nuts.

rryan• 12 years ago

OTOH Larry Page doesn't care at all about something as trivial as a widely-loved RSS reader while education is something he cares about deeply.

Also, there is obviously a gigantic market there.

Karunamon2• 12 years ago

I wonder if they have any plan on releasing this toolset to non-academic users? I can see this being really useful in the enterprise for training and such.

whytaka3• 12 years ago

Hi. I made a post in another branch of this thread about our startup.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7711628

You might be interested to know that we have pilot projects with enterprise clients to introduce informal learning, training, and tacit knowledge collection to the workplace with our app. I'd love to answer any questions you may have.

jgautsch2• 12 years ago

I think this is a brilliant move by Google. I think it's hardly about the teachers, and more about the students. Three things come to my mind watching this video:

1. Adobe software like Photoshop being easy to pirate made it easy for design students to use it exclusively, helping it become the de facto software used in industry

2. A while ago Microsoft was able to have Word/PowerPoint become part of the computing educational curriculum, helping them become the de facto document/presentation software.

3. Every one of those kids in the video had Chromebooks sitting on their desk. A Chromebook makes sense for a student because it's cheaper, but is no longer viable if students are required to use Word/PowerPoint.

The point of 1 & 2 is that people use what people know. I think this is a great long term thinking move that could help both Chromebook and Google Apps in a very big way.

Relevant: http://www.zdnet.com/office-is-the-only-thing-that-can-kill-...

* Unfortunately I couldn't find a reference for #2, but I remember reading about how that was one of Microsoft's smartest moves

RogerL• 12 years ago

I am sitting in front of a Chromebook and have Microsoft Word and Powerpoint open in it. It's free to use[1].

[1]http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/online/office-online-colla...

jgautsch2• 12 years ago

Oh huh I didn't know about office online. I was going off of Google's support site which says "The Chromebook doesn’t work with some types of software you may be used to, like Microsoft Office..."[1]

[1]https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3265094?hl=en

wehadfun• 12 years ago

I got down voted last time I said this but I will say it again >help teachers create and organize assignments

Teachers do not want to create assignments. They just want to use them. Google needs a library of assignments that teachers can use. I created a similar thing for an elementary school and the create assignments thing was not cool with the teachers I demoed to"

KC8ZKF• 12 years ago

Does Google let teachers share assignments? That would help, a library of assignments could be built and improved.

kaitai2• 12 years ago

Alleluia.

Ok, I want to use and modify assignments.

whytaka3• 12 years ago

This is what our startup is doing. We are developing an online publishing platform for shareable and reusable learning activities where the educator can ask for specific formats in their students' response. Some of which can be auto-graded. The aim is to have a crowdsourced global repository of reusable activities that teachers can curate and push to their class so that their role is less in the introduction of material and more in ironing out the difficulties.

We have plenty of encouraging success stories from our expansion in Quebec and we aim to reproduce the same model in the English world. I'd be very pleased if you would take a look.

http://www.ChallengeU.com - our new brand to revamp ourselves in the English market

http://www.Didacti.org - our current brand

http://www.Didacti.com - our current app. Still very much a beta.

I believe I have seen some people speak of their own startups here before but I've never been clear on the rules about 'self-promotion'. Kindly let me know if I have committed a foul.

ivan_ah2• 12 years ago

Hi yutaka, good to meet you again on the Interwebs (we met at pycon).

Can you tell us more about the "learning activities" are like? Is it all interactive demos and quiz questions or are lessons? Are the lessons specifically aligned to some standard (e.g. CCSS, see http://www.nctm.org/canadiancorrelations/ for Canadian equivalents).

And about the company, do students pay? Do teachers who have produced the activities get paid?

RE self promotion, from my experience, slef.plug()s are OK on HN, especially if they are on topic (like yours).

nnnnni• 12 years ago

I like how it's going to be available after school starts in many places rather than during the summer when teachers (and tech departments) could prepare it for the school year.

drunkenmasta• 12 years ago

how is this different from the 200 other online education platforms?

mathgorges• 12 years ago

I work in educational technology for a school district of ~5000 students. I am also a Google certified trainer. My opinion is obviously bias, but here it goes.

1) It will integrate with my current student database (active directory, synced with Google through GADS)

2) It will work with the tech my teachers are already comfortable using (Google Drive)

3) It solves a problem I already have, rather than giving me new ones to deal with. I already have teachers struggling to assign/grade/return assignments using their Google accounts. If I were to set up (for example) Moodle, now I have a list of new problems (managing _another_ set of accounts, integrating it with our scheduling system)

4) Staff interest. I'm going to get more people to come to my PD if I say "Come learn about Google Classroom", than if I say "Come learn about blackboard"

Last, and most importantly

5) Price. It's free. I don't have to ask the board for permission, I don't have to create a future cost projection, I don't even have to make a PO. I just have to turn it on and train the staff.

I'm excited for this.

jestinjoy12• 12 years ago

What about Google Course builder. Is this a replacement of that with new features?

esornoso• 12 years ago

Great stuff.

Google Classroom

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