This afternoon Google announced the launch of some helpful new Google Classroom features. Some of these were teased back in June. A couple of the new features will require some work by your domain administrator while others are available right now to all teachers. Here’s an overview of the new Google Classroom features that I think most teachers will appreciate.

An Easier Way to Get Students Into a Classroom
There is a new method for getting students into a Google Classroom classroom that you create. Now you can just give them a unique link to click to join. For teachers this should be a lot easier than other methods of the having to invite students by email or having them enter a class code.

A New Way to Keep Track of What You Need to Do
An updated “to-do” widget for students and teachers is being added to Google Classroom. This widget will show a summary of work you need to do, like review assignments, across all classes that you teach. For your students this widget will show them a summary of work they need to do across the classes that they are in.

A New Grades Export Option
If your school uses Infinite Campus, there is a new option to export grades from Google Classroom to Infinite Campus. This does require that your domain administrator sets up the connection.

Limit “Knocking” in Google Meet
As the host or moderator of a Google Meet when you reject a “knock” (a request to join) twice from the same person, he or she won’t be able to knock again during that meeting. Likewise, when you kick someone out of a meeting that person can’t knock.

I’ll be talking about these new features and more in tomorrow’s Practical Ed Tech webinar, Get Organized With Google Classroom, Meet, and Calendar.