The middle of August is almost here which means that many have returned for the start of the new school year. And those who haven’t started will be starting soon. During the summer Google added bunch of new features to Google Classroom, Google Forms, and other tools that teachers and students use throughout the year. I counted eighteen updates. Here they are:

New in Google Forms since June 1st:

• Add written feedback on every question on a quiz made in Google Forms.

• A new checkbox grid response format. This allows students to choose multiple responses to a question.

• You can now ask people to upload a file as a response to a question in a Google Form even if they are not a member of your school’s G Suite domain.

• When you are creating a quiz in Google Forms you can now set a default point value for your questions rather than having to specify the value of each question individually.

• Intelligent response validation is a new feature that will attempt to verify that the type of response submitted is what you requested. For example, if you ask for an email address and the respondent doesn’t include a complete email address, the response won’t be accepted.

• You can now rearrange the order of sections of your Forms by just dragging and dropping the entire section into a new place in your Form.

• Batch grading of questions on quizzes created in Google Forms will let you grade on a question-by-question basis. In other words, you can grade all responses to question #1 on a quiz rather than having to grade one student’s complete set of responses before moving on to the next student’s set of responses.

• Coming soon! – Import grades from Google Forms quiz responses into your Google Classroom gradebook.

New in Google Classroom since June 1st:

• You can now view all of a student’s work in one stream. Simply click on a student’s name in your Google Classroom roster to view all of that student’s work in one place.

• A minor update to the gradebook in Google Classroom lets you use decimal points in your grading.

• You can now display your Google Classroom join codes in full screen. This should make it a bit easier to get all of your students to join your Classroom quickly.

• More 3rd party services have been made available for seamless integration into Google Classroom. Those new services are Kami, Quizizz, and Edcite.

• It is now possible to transfer ownership of Google Classroom classes from one teacher to another.

• Administrators can now sync rosters from student management systems to Google Classroom rosters.

Other updates:

• The YouTube video editor is being removed on September 20th. A list of alternative tools is available at https://freetech4teach.wpengine.com/2017/08/alternatives-to-youtubes-video-editor.html

• Google Earth (the web version) can now be added to your G Suite for Education domain.

• The Google Earth iPad app has been updated to match all of the features of the Android version. Learn more at https://freetech4teach.wpengine.com/2017/06/google-earth-is-now-core-g-suite-for.html

• The Google Expeditions virtual reality app for Android now lets students guide themselves instead of having to be guided through tours. See this new option in action at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD2TluUCvi4