Gemini in Classroom: No-cost AI tools that amplify teaching and learning
Last year, we began bringing the capabilities of Gemini to Google Classroom to help educators use AI for their common teaching tasks. Today, we’re announcing that our suite of educational AI tools — Gemini in Classroom — will now be available to all educators with Google Workspace for Education accounts, free of charge. Gemini in Classroom includes more than 30 new features to help educators spend more of their time on the art of teaching. We’re also announcing teacher-led AI experiences for students, reflecting our continued efforts to provide more safe, responsible AI tools that also give students agency to learn in the ways that work best for them.
Energize teaching and learning with Gemini in Classroom
Create engaging content and resources
Starting today and rolling out globally over the coming weeks in English, educators with Google Workspace for Education accounts will be able to generate content with Gemini from a central destination in Classroom. With access to more than 30 AI tools, educators can get help kickstarting lessons, brainstorming ideas and differentiating content for students.
Early pilot participants have already been sharing how much impact Gemini in Classroom is bringing to their day-to-day. Mariam Fan, a language and robotics teacher, said, “Gemini in Classroom saves me hours on planning and support, fostering a more inclusive and engaging classroom." Technology teacher, Mike Amante, called it “the ultimate teaching assistant—always available, always helpful.” Chris Webb has been especially using the rubric generation tool while planning for his math classes, “taking the repetitive task of making a rubric, and turning it into a quick and easy one, bringing your rubric right into Classroom in a matter of seconds."
After providing the target grade and topic, educators can get a first draft of a lesson plan and further refine it with the help of Gemini. They’ll also get suggestions for relevant videos and can generate a quiz or hook based on the lesson plan.
Educators will also be able to collaborate with Gemini using starter prompts for the Gemini app that help with common tasks. Here, Gemini provides real-world examples related to the topic they’re teaching. They continue the conversation until they’re able to find an example that will resonate with their 7th grade students.
An educator can input the target grade level and topic, then get a draft of a quiz based on learning objectives. From there, they'll be able to export the quiz to Google Forms.
We’ll continue partnering with educators to explore how Gemini can be helpful across Google Classroom – especially across assigning and grading workflows. To try out new features, such as getting suggested feedback for writing assignments, sign up for the AI track of our Google for Education Pilot Program.
Enable teacher-led AI experiences for students with NotebookLM and Gems
In the coming months we’ll be launching teacher-led AI experiences for students — grounded in Classroom materials. Using NotebookLM and Gems right from within Classroom, educators can create interactive experiences to empower student learning, curiosity and agency.
- Teacher-led NotebookLM in Classroom: Educators can select resources from their class and instantly create an interactive study guide and podcast-style Audio Overviews for students, grounded only in the materials educators upload.
- Teacher-led Gems in Classroom: Educators can create Gems, which are custom versions of Gemini, for students to interact with. After educators select Classroom resources to inform the Gem, they can quickly create AI experts to help students who need extra support or want to go deeper in their learning.
To accompany a reading assignment introducing new biology concepts, the educator included a “Quiz me” Gem to support student comprehension and understanding.
Classroom will include four Gems templates to help educators get started: Study partner, Quiz me, Brainstorm partner and Real-world connector.
Here, an educator is creating a study guide students can chat with, including a podcast-style Audio Overview with NotebookLM, to help students prepare for a test. Educators can highlight the NotebookLM resource at the top of the Classwork page so they’re always available for extra practice, support and learning opportunities.
Power data-driven instruction and differentiation
Today, we’re equally excited to announce our plans to release some of the most requested features by educators for tracking student progress and creating unique learning experiences using Google Classroom:
- Track progress against learning standards and skills: In the coming months, educators will be able to tag coursework with relevant learning standards or skills, and view new analytics of student performance. To start, Classroom will include U.S. K12 national and state learning standards published on 1EdTech Consortium's CASE® Network 2 (Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange®), including NGSS, ISTE, ACT, among others. Soon, Classroom will include learning standards from additional countries, so express interest in the pilot and let us know what learning standards your institution wants included.
- Making your learning standards available in Classroom: We know each institution requires a specific set of learning standards, some of which are custom. In partnership with 1EdTech and Common Good Learning Tools, any institution or standards-issuing body can host and publish their learning standards via CASE Network 2, enabling a scalable, interoperable solution for making your learning standards available in Classroom. In advance of the Classroom launch, we encourage institutions to add their standards to CASE Network 2 now to make them readily available.
- Highlighting class insights to help differentiate instruction: Teachers visiting their class pages will now see a new “Analytics” tab. This shows a centralized view of student performance and engagement in Google Classroom, now with insights that help educators understand when students may need additional support, such as which students are consistently missing assignments or whose grades are improving. Actionable insights are also shown directly on the Classwork page, where teachers can see whether students have made progress with an upcoming assignment and send a quick reminder.
- More content and flexible reading modes in Read Along in Classroom: Educators have asked for more flexible ways to use Read Along in Classroom, from the content they can use to the ways that students can read. Educators can now upload their own content, or soon generate a story with help from Gemini so students can get real-time support from the AI-powered reading buddy on books most relevant to them. When using Read Along in a class setting, educators now have the option to enable silent reading mode, and will soon be able to use listening mode — while still gaining insights into students’ comprehension. We’ll also be expanding the library of decodable books from Heggerty to more than 100 stories with an option to see student performance on these decodable books in the dashboard. We will be expanding Read Along in Classroom to more languages in the coming months, too.
Here, a science teacher is tagging their assignment with learning standards, generating standard-specific rubrics, then viewing learning goals analytics to track student progress.
Educators can now access class analytics more easily, and see insights about student performance and engagement.
Within Read Along in Classroom, an educator can create a custom story with Gemini based on inputs like learning goals or specific topics and more. With these generated stories, educators can tailor content to students’ needs, while still providing in-the-moment support from Read Along’s AI-powered reading buddy.
Educators can select from three reading modes: reading aloud, silent reading, and (coming soon) listening mode. With silent reading and listening modes, educators can still see insights into student comprehension in the Read Along in Classroom analytics dashboard for relevant books.
Learn more about the 50+ new Classroom features— like expanded language support, grading improvements and upcoming integrations — in our launch guide, and sign up for updates from Google for Education as these features roll out.
