Google Classroom announced (sign up to text drive!)

The Official Google Blog announced today a preview of its new Classroom, a free and also ad-free tool in the Google Apps for Education suite.  I am hopeful that this will prove the answer to my hopelessly messy Drive issues and a serious organizational and communication solution for my our classes.
The post shares that Classroom will help

teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease. Classroom is based on the principle that educational tools should be simple and easy to use, and is designed to give teachers more time to teach and students more time to learn.
With Classroom, you’ll be able to:

• Create and collect assignments: Classroom weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly. They can quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback to individual students.
• Improve class communications: Teachers can make announcements, ask questions and comment with students in real time—improving communication inside and outside of class.
• Stay organized: Classroom automatically creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student. Students can easily see what’s due on their Assignments page.

Teachers and professors may apply now for a preview.  In about a month, a limited number of educators will be selected for a test drive.  The plan is to have Classroom available for any Google Apps for Education school in September.
Developers are also invited to sign up to ensure their products will play nice with the new platform.
For more information check out this introduction, the FAQs, and these two case studies:

• Clarkstown
• Fontbonne

Filed under: Google, Google Apps, Google Classroom