Google Classroom Add-Ons Officially Launches, Enabling Integrations with 18 Ed Tech Tools

• By Kristal Kuykendall
• 08/01/22

Google today announced that the Classroom Add-Ons feature, in beta since last summer, is rolling out to all Teaching & Learning subscribers and Education Plus subscribers in time for fall semester, enabling access to 18 popular ed tech tools from within Classroom.

Without needing to leave Google Classroom, educators whose school administrators have deployed the add-ons will be able to easily find, add, use, and grade content from any or all of the following tools included in the Add-Ons launch:

• Adobe Express for Education
• BookWidgets
• CK-12
• EdPuzzle
• Formative
• Genially
• Google Arts & Culture
• Google Play Books
• IXL
• Kahoot
• Nearpod
• Newsela
• PBS LearningMedia
• Pear Deck
• SAFARI Montage
• Sora from OverDrive Education
• WeVideo
• Wordwall

Each add-on tool — once it’s enabled by school administrators through the Google Admin Console or Workspace Marketplace — will be accessible simply by logging in to the student or teacher Classroom account, Google said. Add-ons will be available over the coming days and weeks to schools using the Teaching & Learning or Education Plus editions of Google Workspace, according to the Google Classroom blog announcing the release.

The following video shows an overview of the capabilities using the new Classroom Add-Ons:

Some examples of new educator functions made possible by the add-ons, listed on the Classroom blog, include:

• With just a few clicks, students can access, and turn in, interactive Pear Deck presentations from within Classroom.
• The IXL add-on allows a teacher to browse IXL skills by subject or grade level before adding it to a Classroom Assignment or Stream, and even assign skills to a specific student.
• With the Kahoot add-on, teachers can access kahoots they made or saved, and make them easy for students to use, all without leaving Classroom.
• The CK-12 add-on lets you create interactive assignments, track class performance across assignments, see auto-graded results and view insights that show concept-level performance patterns and actionable recommendations for each student.
• Nearpod, in a recent blog post about the new Classroom add-on, said it will allow teachers with any Nearpod subscription to perform tasks such as the following, directly within Google Classroom: access their Nearpod lessons and add them as an Assignment, Quiz Assignment, or Question; assign Nearpod lessons in Live or Student-Paced modes for their entire class or individual students; add important point values, due dates, or instructions; prompt student joins to the lesson through the link in Google Classroom; view post-session reports in Google Classroom; and grade Nearpod lessons within Google Classroom.

Google Product Manager Dave Messer, in the blog post, invited educators to request new add-on partners not included in the launch by giving feedback within Classroom.

Ed tech providers are also welcome to message Google about creating their own add-on by completing this form, Messer wrote.