Google launches Cast for Education app, Quizzes in Forms, Cardboard Expeditions for Android

Google today is announcing a few new features for education users.

Now teachers will be able to use the Google Forms service to give quizzes to students and have Google automatically grade them and even show educational content to students when they get questions wrong.

And a new Google Cast for Education Chrome app will let teachers choose what content to show on all their students’ screens. The app, which integrates with Google Classroom, also permits students to share their screens.

“Kids compete to be the ones in a classroom…they want to be the ones to share their screen,” Chrome product manager Max Kirsch told reporters in a briefing on the news.

Google is also taking the beta label off of the Google Cardboard Expeditions app that teachers can use to take students on virtual-reality field trips. Now teachers can simply download the app (on Android now, coming soon to iOS) onto the devices that they and their students will use — they no longer need to be already enrolled in the program to use the app. And Best Buy will begin selling special kits that include a tablet, virtual reality headsets, and a router.

Plus, certain education apps for Chromebooks — Explain Everything, Soundtrap, and WeVideo — can now be purchased together for deployment on students’ Chromebooks in discounted annual subscriptions through resellers.

These new tools could help Google expand adoption of its low-cost Cardboard virtual reality platform in the educational setting, and they may also help Google’s Chromebooks become still more popular in the classroom. And the Chromebook, which is getting support for Android apps, has been on a roll — in the first quarter of this year Chromebooks actually outsold Macs, the Verge reported, citing IDC data.

Apple and Microsoft recently launched education services. Also today Amazon introduced the Amazon Inspire service for education use.

More than 60 million teachers are using Google Apps for Education, Google Forms product manager Molly Mackinlay said. That’s up from 50 million in October.

A blog post has more detail.