GAFE Updates

GOING PLATINUM: As time goes on, Google’s education initiatives and products continue to develop in both market share and growth. Back in July 2014, a Google rep reported that more than one million Chromebooks were sold to schools in Q2 of 2014, and Chromebooks were experiencing 6x year-over-year growth in sales across the country in K-12 schools. But with great power comes great responsibility, and as Google collects more users, so does it collect more comments on what it can improve.
Earlier today, Google announced on their blog five updates to Classroom based on feedback from students and educators around the world:

• Inviting students to Groups: For educators who already have a Google Group set up for classes, they can now use that group to invite students to Classroom. And for school heads, Google Apps administrators can now sync a school’s class rosters from student information systems (SIS) into Google Groups. Have something like School Directory Sync? You’re golden.
• Marking assignments as “done”: Educators can now mark assignments on Classroom as “done” if there’s nothing to turn in. For you literature teachers, this is useful for when students complete a chapter in a book for homework.
• More teacher controls: Educators can now set permissions for whether or not their students can comment or post in the Classroom stream. Teachers can also mute individual students, and view previously deleted posts or comments in the stream.
• Exporting grades: Looking to download grades for all assignments at once? Now you can export grades to any gradebook.
• Sorting by first or last name: Teachers can now choose to sort students by first or last name.