Skip to main content

Students and teachers will love these new Google Docs and Classroom features

students and teachers will love these new google docs classroom features student with computer shutterstock 85369135
Shutterstock / Robert Kneschke
Google held an event today in San Francisco, and the topic was Classroom and its productivity suite, which consists of Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. A slew of updates were announced that will likely make students and teachers more productive.

Docs

How many times were you writing a paper and needed to look something up? The new Research tool in Docs for Android lets you search Google while in a document. And you can simply add a quote or image from the search with a couple of quick taps.

Research in Google Docs

A new Voice Typing feature is perfect when you’re on the go. Now you can record ideas or compose an entire essay in any of 40 languages without ever touching your keyboard. You can enable it by opening the Tools menu within Docs in Chrome. Once enabled, tap the microphone button on your phone’s keyboard and say whatever is on your mind.

Voice typing in Docs

If you find yourself collaborating with other classmates on a doc, you can now get better information as to what was added or deleted while you were gone. Just click on “See new changes” and pick up right where your classmates left off.

Forms

Forms is now the perfect way to conduct surveys. You can choose from many colorful themes or even customize your own with a photo or logo. Google provides a selection of question formats, and you can even insert GIFs or videos. Once you send the survey out, you can see the responses live as they happen.
Google_Forms_Surveys

Templates

Google is now making it easier than ever to create good-looking newsletters, presentations, or any other type of document. A new collection of templates has been added to Docs, Sheets, and Slides. They include options for reports, portfolios, resumes, and more.

Google_Docs_New_Templates
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Sheets

A new Explore feature creates charts and insights automatically from your data, which will make it easier to understand the data faster. This feature works on the web or on Android.

Explore in Google Sheets

Classroom

The Share to Classroom Chrome extension makes it easy for teachers to share a website with the entire class at the same time. It doesn’t even matter what type of computer each student has, as long as they are using the Chrome browser.

Google Classroom: Mission control for students and teachers
Google has announced that all of these new features are rolling out today, so go and be more productive.

Editors' Recommendations

Robert Nazarian
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Robert Nazarian became a technology enthusiast when his parents bought him a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color. Now his biggest…
Don’t update your Pixel phone — a new Android update might break it
Android 14 logo on the Google Pixel 8 Pro.

Android 14 introduced a host of convenient additions to Google’s Pixel phones, but a recent minor update has utterly broken the storage system for some users. Specifically, owners of the Google Pixel 6, Google Pixel 6 Pro, and Google Pixel 6a who run multiple profiles on their phones are reporting that their phones no longer have access to the storage pipeline for the main profile.

That means users are locked out of accessing the stored media and find themselves unable to add new files as well. A few users have reported on Reddit and Google’s official community forum that they can’t even click images using the camera app because it flashes an insufficient storage warning message. A few others say trying to install an APK package also returns a similar storage writing roadblock.

Read more
There’s something about the Google Pixel 8 that worries me
A person holding the Google Pixel 8.

Google released the next generation of Pixel devices recently, including the Google Pixel 8 and Google Pixel 8 Pro. These have been the best Pixel smartphones in a while, as they pack the improved Tensor G3 chip inside, better cameras, brighter displays, and more — all in a slightly updated design. I've been using the phones for a couple of weeks now, and I really like what Google's done with them.

But Google also added some more photo editing capabilities to the Pixel 8 lineup, with a heavy reliance on AI with the Tensor G3 chip. While these AI-heavy editing tools can help you chase perfection, they shouldn’t be relied on too heavily or abused.
The Pixel 8's AI tools are impressive ...
Magic Editor on the Google Pixel 8 Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends.

Read more
Chrome is still a RAM killer, but this new feature would be a huge help
Google Chrome icon in mac dock.

Google’s Chrome browser is infamous for consuming a lot of RAM. While recent updates have attempted to solve this problem from a technical side, a new feature may put more of the management in the hands of the user.
With the latest beta version of Chrome Canary, users can now simply hover their mouse cursor over a tab to gain access to real-time memory usage of that specific tab.
Up until now, you had to dig into the Chrome Task Manager to see how much memory each tab is consuming. But as reported by Windows Central, the new feature would give you quick and direct access to this important information. The prototype feature was first posted on X (formerly Twitter) by user Leopeva64 and showed the tab RAM usage.

Of course, it only gives a small overview and doesn’t offer the same detailed information (such as running processes, tabs, and extensions0 as the built-in task manager.
Practically speaking, having a small indicator on the top is going to make the process of clearing unwanted tabs a lot easier. The new feature is also said to inform users about whether Chrome's Memory saver feature has actively frozen a tab to save memory similar to Microsoft Edge's Sleeping tabs feature. Of course, this feature only works when a certain tab is inactive for a long period of time. 
Google is said to be testing this feature, but if you are using version 117 on the Stable Channel, you may get access to it. To enable the memory usage feature, head to Chrome://flags and search for Show memory usage in hovercards. Select the dropdown and enable it. A quick restart may also be required.
Recently, we saw Google testing on a feature that helps organize tabs in a more efficient way. Using the Organize Tabs features, the browser attempts to reorder your tabs into groups of similar pages. It even lets you rename these groups, and create tab groups automatically once it has categorized your tabs.

Read more