Google Expeditions is a free app that will allow you and your students to experience virtual reality and augmented reality technology. There are many expeditions to choose from and I would highly recommend that you look at the list, download one, and implement it with your students.
Here is the list of available AR/VR expeditions.
A VR, virtual reality, experience is taking your students on a virtual field trip, for example, to The Great Wall of China.
An AR, augmented reality, experience is bringing an object into your environment, or setting as shown below. Notice, the dinosaur and background is my classroom.
Additionally, I created this quick guide presentation for teachers on getting started at my school and I hope you find it helpful too.
Google Classroom has released many new features recently. First, the Google for Education team listened to your feedback and they brought back the TO DO list. It can be accessed from the main menu by clicking on the 3 lines at the top left side. Choose the ‘To Do’ option to see how many students turned in an assignment. You can also filter out the list by selecting a class by clicking on the tiny triangle.
Another new feature is having the student selector available in the Google Classroom app. At this time, it is only available for Android only. This feature will allow you to select random students right from your phone or tablet. Simply, go into the Classroom app, select your class, then select the ‘People’ page, then choose the student selector icon at the top right corner. This icon is the one with the squares and diamond and shown in the image.
On the next screen, you will see a count of students ‘Not Picked’, ‘Picked’, ‘Absent’, and a random student’s profile. Next, you can either call on this student, or select ‘Call Later’ or ‘Absent’. Note, if you select ‘Call Later’ the numbers do not change. However, if you select ‘Absent’ or ‘Next’, then the student is removed from the ‘Not Picked’ category, and added to the ‘Absent’ or ‘Picked’ category. Additionally, the ‘Reset’ option will reset the count of the ‘Picked’ and ‘Absent’ to zero.
There is no need to label popsicle sticks with student names or numbers and placing them in cup. And, there's no need to keep track of who was called upon. Google classroom will keep track of that information for you.
If you want to read more about these updates, you can visit Google’s blog.
