Google Classroom

I really have mixed feelings about this app.

Let’s start positively. Google classroom as a service is genius. It allows you to have a single organized and streamlined way to turn in assignments. It is really convenient to use when the app works. That said, the app on iOS and iPadOS in particular has some horrible bugs that I have lost work over. First off, the PDF editor built into this app is terrible. It works sometimes. Using it with the Apple Pencil to do work really should be better than it is. It also has no auto save, which may not seem like a big deal, but when you look at the way iOS handles RAM management, it is a big issue. Let’s say you have your textbook on one app in a web browser and your homework in Google Classroom. You swipe over to the textbook in your browser. iOS, because iPads have very little ram, will kill Google Classroom to launch the browser. And because the PDF editor has no auto save feature, all of the work you just did is now gone and cannot be recovered. Second massive issue is the integration with Google services. When you go to the Google Docs app to edit a document that is in an assignment, sometimes the document saves, but the old version of the document is still in the classroom assignment. If you hit turn in, your teacher will not see anything that you added. Other times it does sync if you refresh the Google classroom page before turning in. But I have found that even though images are visible to me, sometimes they are not to my teacher. This app certainly is not without its issues, and it is honestly infuriating to use.

Reviewed on version 3.52.300046075

A serious review

IK a lot of students seem to hate on this app unnecessarily (me includes), but there are some big flaws that need to be addressed. First of all, the lag. Sometimes the pages won’t load or the entire app will just shut down in my face, which prevents me from turning in work. Another thing is that when attaching files sometimes as links or straight from google drive, it won’t let you. It’ll say error and you’ll have to try creating a copy of the doc and see if that works, and if it doesn’t...whoopy-doo try again tmwr. My theory for this is that you can’t submit files that belong to someone else, even if you have editing permission. And that the app/site will occasionally just have a conniption. This is really annoying when you have group projects. Also the organization of classes on the home page leaves much to be desired. Not all of my teachers archive their classes, so it ends up cluttering my feed and I’m scrolling up and down for 5 minutes trying to find a class between the endless swamps of gray. I wish I could pick the order for them or maybe have class folders (?), where I can group similar classes together without completely hiding them away. But yeah, those are the main grievances I can recall right now since I’m in my summer days. Although this app was by no means perfect, I fear the the switch to canva in my district will be even worse. I genuinely can’t imagine that it’d turn out well.

Reviewed on version 3.39.300040090

Students hate homework, so they rate the app low, but it’s actually well-made.

The layout is easy to navigate, I have not experienced issues with performance on the platform in the past four weeks I have been using it as a student, and it’s a very convenient tool for both teachers and students. This app is only rated low because students either dislike doing classwork on a computer in general, or they do not like being assigned homework over the weekend or when they are otherwise not in school. This isn’t a good reason to rate the app low, but they will either 1. outright state they dislike school/schoolwork, or 2. write a fake review claiming it is terrible. I think this is further proven by the fact that all of the other Google apps, to my knowledge, are said to be well-made and have stellar reviews. This app absolutely does not deserve the two stars it currently has at the time of this review. I typically do not even write reviews, but I think it’s so ridiculous that this app is THIS poorly rated simply because students dislike schoolwork, so I felt compelled to write this review. TL;DR: I think this is a great app as are the other Google apps, it’s very convenient for me as a student in high-school. Students have bombed this app with negative reviews simply because they do not like schoolwork.

Reviewed on version 3.41.300041000