Google has been working on enhancing the Google Classroom experience in India. With new features and additional updates, owing to the demand as regular schooling has been brought to a halt due to the looming COVID-19 pandemic. The new features include 10 new Indian languages such as Telugu, Marathi, Urdu, Bengali and Tamil amongst others.
Bani Paintal Dhawan, Google Head of Education (India and South Asia) said Google Classrooms had grown 300% in India as many schools and other educational institutes adopted the application during the COVID-19 pandemic. He added Google Classrooms has already signed an agreement with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to train Indian teachers on how to conduct classes in the virtual room.
Google is providing students and teachers with a range of services, including G Suite for Education, Google Forms for conducting quizzes and tests. Access to Google Meet video conferencing services and Google Classroom has been critical, which enables educators to create, review and organise assignments as well as communicate directly with students.
With schools locked, Google Classroom has become the go-to choice. Classroom is free for most teachers and allows teachers to communicate with their entire class from a distance. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 outbreak, Google has seen users double to over 100 million users. In India, the company has plans to roll out features that will give teachers some control over the class. It will provide the ability to prohibit participants from joining the ongoing class after they have been outed or denied entry twice on Google Meet.
Besides India, Google Classroom has found a niche in Italy and Indonesia. Javier Soltero, VP at Google in charge of G Suite, said he got an email in March from his team in Europe with an inquiry from Italy’s Minister of Education asking if Google’s platform was capable of moving the entire country’s school system online immediately. He said that several sleepless days and nights later, the service was up and running for millions of children in Italy. Indonesia also has a similar experience. Soltero said Google had seen incredible growth.
Google already held a stable position in the education market with tools like Classroom and Chromebooks.
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