INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Technology heavy hitters are in Chicago this week, showing off their latest ed-tech offerings at International Society for Technology
For Google, that means some key updates to Classrooms, the free, browser-based educational software that currently used by &over 30 million
students& globally, by its count
The app is getting a number of tweaks, including, most notably, more control over quizzes
The Google Forms Quiz now features a &locked mode,& which prohibits students from surfing the web or opening apps until the answers are
submitted — in other words, it stops them from cheating on the machine, while taking a test.
Interestingly, this is the first feature
added to the app that exclusive to managed Chromebooks — i.e
those devices that are sold with the sole purpose of being used in the classroom
That marks a change for the app, which is otherwise open and platform agnostic, for any machine that can access the web
The reason here seems pretty straight-forward, of course — locking users out of other apps requires a lot more system control than more
Also new is a Classwork page, which is designed to be a sort of go-to destination for both teachers and students, organizing questions and
assignments in a single destination
Among other things, that information can now be organized by topic or unit, whereas everything was previously just categorized by date
The new People page, meanwhile
lets teachers add and remove fellow teachers, students and guardians, while other tweaks have been made to the Stream and system settings
Microsoft also used the occasion to announce new lesson plans from partners like the BBC and an Aquatic DLC for Minecraft: Education
