Chris Quarrie: the new Head of Google Classroom's Interface & Design
Chris Quarrie is the new head of design for Google Classroom. He has been listening to educators and students, and wants Google Classroom to be the go-to choice for LMS course creation in K-12 schools and beyond. He is excited to bring improvements to Google Classroom and is looking forward to your feedback (link to comment on ETEC 522 Blog). You can also complete the feedback form below.
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Reflection
For this assignment, I thought about what I would find most useful in my current profession. I teach mostly face-to-face courses, but I have taught an online-only ICT 8 course. I found the Moodle platform to be very clunky, ugly, and hard to use. It didn't have an appealing interface, and moving objects around on the page took ages.
Our school subscribes to Google Apps for Education (GAFE), and when I found out in 2014 that this now included the new Google Classroom, I was excited by the prospect: an LMS that incorporated Google Drive and other Google apps (like Google Docs, etc), as well as direct, instant syncing of assignments and classes to the Google Calendar. Great! B
But then I had a look at the interface. It was incredibly simple (too simple), and didn't offer many of the features of a fully-fledged LMS like Moodle. So I haven't used it yet.
For this assignment, I decided to, as the instructions detail, to "role-play what [I] would do differently if [I] were in charge." Here's my chance to put my own 'stamp' on Google Classroom! As I began to research, I discovered that GAFE was free: I had thought that our school was paying big bucks for a subscription. So I wondered how Google was profiting from this, and discovered that it likely profits from a 'user-loyalty' system, where students who use Google apps at school may be more likely to purchase other Google products and services, like Google Play (Check out this article, which points to ways other than advertising that Google makes money) or phones running Google's Android operating system.
Once I have received feedback on this project I will be adding more to my reflection here!
Our school subscribes to Google Apps for Education (GAFE), and when I found out in 2014 that this now included the new Google Classroom, I was excited by the prospect: an LMS that incorporated Google Drive and other Google apps (like Google Docs, etc), as well as direct, instant syncing of assignments and classes to the Google Calendar. Great! B
But then I had a look at the interface. It was incredibly simple (too simple), and didn't offer many of the features of a fully-fledged LMS like Moodle. So I haven't used it yet.
For this assignment, I decided to, as the instructions detail, to "role-play what [I] would do differently if [I] were in charge." Here's my chance to put my own 'stamp' on Google Classroom! As I began to research, I discovered that GAFE was free: I had thought that our school was paying big bucks for a subscription. So I wondered how Google was profiting from this, and discovered that it likely profits from a 'user-loyalty' system, where students who use Google apps at school may be more likely to purchase other Google products and services, like Google Play (Check out this article, which points to ways other than advertising that Google makes money) or phones running Google's Android operating system.
Once I have received feedback on this project I will be adding more to my reflection here!