Google updated Classroom with new API, Share Button and some other features. The Classroom is Google’s educational initiative introduced last year. Most prominent Classroom updates include the Classroom API and a Classroom share button.

Classroom API

Pepper Lebeck-Jobe, Classroom API tech lead, wrote in a blog post “By using the API, admins will be able to provision and populate classes on behalf of their teachers, set up tools to sync their Student Information Systems with Classroom, and get basic visibility into which classes are being taught in their domain.”

The Classroom API will allow other apps to integrate with Classroom, and admins will be able to control whether students and teachers can authorize apps to access their Classroom data. Google also said that it will not permit apps to use the API for advertising purposes.

Classroom share button

Google has also introduced a Classroom share button for developers which make it easier to assign or turn in content into Classroom from the external websites. With the help of this feature, a teacher can point students to links, videos or images on the internet directly from the Google’s Classroom. Also the students will be able to share content back to Classroom from third party. More than 20 educational content and tool providers have agreed to integrate the Classroom share button including the American Museum of Natural History, PBS, Quizlet, Discovery Education, TIME Edge and Duolingo.

Other updates coming to Classroom

Other updates coming to the Classroom include the addition of mobile notifications in the Classroom for Android and iOS apps. When the new assignments are created, teachers or other students send notes and grades are issued, it will alert the students. TheClassroom will also be gaining the ability to re-use previous assignments and whitelist domains.

Benefits of using Google Classroom

Google launched Classroom in 2014 and it is available to anyone with Google Apps for Education, a free suite of productivity tools including Google Docs, Drive and Gmail. Classroom is developed to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly and include some time saving features like the ability to make a copy of Google document automatically for each student.

Google updated Classroom will let teachers quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the assignment, and provide real-time feedback and grades directly in the Classroom. Updates including the Classroom API and a Classroom share button are aimed to expand the use of Google Apps and adoption of Chromebooks by educational institutions.