Rest of the Day: Google Updates Its Education Tools With New Features
Google has several apps and services aimed only at teachers and students, and they are providing some new features in time for the new school year. And the Expedition app has new VR experiences to take you on a digital tour.
- Google for Education, its suite of services and tools used by some educational institutions, is receiving several updates today. The Google Classroom app can now help parents keep up to date with daily or weekly summaries of their child’s work and classroom announcements, and teachers can now comment on homework in the app. And Google Expeditions has new “trips” that work with Google Cardboard, as well as a new full screen mode for non-VR experiences. Finally, Gmail’s Inbox is now rolling out to Google for Education users as well. [Google for Education]
- In other news, Google is trying to improve voice recognition by using Reddit for accented sound clips. Contractors working for Google post to subreddits like / r / WorkOnline (and more emphasis-relevant, / r / Edinburgh) to read phrases aloud in exchange for a small fee. Simply put, the more speech data, the better the voice recognition. [The Verge]
- This site recreates the wonderful Stranger Things headline sequence with whatever text you want. Creative studio Nelson Cash dived into iconic typography and created this fun widget just for fun.
- Mattress startup Casper now makes dog beds. 125 dollars! [Gizmodo]
- Kotaku reviews the highly publicized No Man’s Sky. Verdict? It does give a sense of surprise and discovery, but it is full of flaws and mistakes. [Kotaku]
- Jezebel speaks out about alarming gender inequalities in video game culture. [Jezebel]