Class Tools

Google released updates to their existing tools all the time, but it is not often that Google releases a brand new tool.  However, they just did that with Class Tools. Built specifically for educators and schools, Class Tools provides a simple way for teachers to manage workflow, hand work to their students, and maintain some degree of control over how the students interact with that work.

It's no surprise that keeping (some) students on task can be challenging, and Class Tools aims to meet this need with a Focus Mode that locks students into only those things that the teacher has asked them to work on.  The teacher selects the students, or groups of students, selects the work they want done, and then pushes that to student devices for a specified period of time.

Let's just talk about the devices aspect.  One of the requirements for Class Tools is that both teachers and students need to be on a managed Chromebook, that is, a Chromebook enrolled into the school domain. For students this is a pretty common scenario, but Chromebook use by staff seems to be less common. I guess this will go one of two ways; a) it will either encourage schools to explore the idea of Class Tools for their teaching staff, and they'll get a great deal of value from what Class Tools offers, or b) it will never get the traction it needs to succeed and will be another insufficiently-used tool that ends up in the Google Graveyard. I hope it's the former because I really do think more schools could benefit from Chrombooks for teachers, and this might be the catalyst to encourage that.  I guess we'll see.

There are other really interesting things that Class Tools can do.  One is the captions and translations function.  The teacher has an option to insert a panel on the screen of their Chromebook (because remember, they need one) that brings their words up in real time. And because the teacher's device is very often being shown on a large screen in the classroom, it effectively puts closed captions of the teacher's instructions on the big screen.  I can see advantages of this and there is heaps of research supporting the ideas that captions can be a big help with literacy and understanding.  But beyond that, the students can also enable these same closed captions on the screen of their own Chromebook, bring the teacher's words dircetly to their device.  And then, if enabled, the student has the option to switch those captions to any language they like, so effectively now the teacher can speak in English and the students can get their words in a chosen language, all in near real time.  That's not just a technical marvel, but could have really useful applications in the classroom. I dislike that most of Google's documentation on this feature keeps referring to the way these captions can support the teacher's "lecture" but that's a whole other conversation.

Finally, Class Tools also supports the ability for a teacher to remotely monitor a student's screen.  It's a feature that I've had working initially, although I cannot get it to work again now, so maybe it's a network issue?  Not sure. I think it could be useful, although if I am in a Classroom with students and want to see what they are working on, I'd much prefer to just walk over, and have a look and a chat.  I'm not a big fan of remote monitoring tools like this, but if you are, well it has it.  Mind you, it's just one student screen at a time, not the screens of every student at once, like Hāpara Highlights does for example. 

Here's a 12 minute video walkthrough I made to show how these features look.  Have a peek at it and let me know your thoughts in the comments.  And if you are using Class Tools in the wild with your kids, please do let me know how it's working for you.