Google pre-announces Class tools for Chromebooks

Coming soon to Chromebooks, but only with Workspace Plus, Google takes a page from GoGuardian and Hapara to bring classroom management features directly into Chrome OS

Last updated January 22, 2025

First time here? Instinctive offers affordable cybersecurity for schools. Check out the features, schedule a demo, or try it now for free

Get more admin tips & tricks in your inbox

Class tools gives teachers a view into student devices

Today at BETT 2025 Google pre-announced a new set of features for Chromebooks that allows teachers to manage their class devices directly from a teacher Chromebook. With Class tools, teachers can:

View student screens - It looks like initially teachers will be able to view one student at a time. Students will be notified when their screen is being viewed by the teacher, so .
Send and pin websites - Teachers can send a website to student devices and pin it so students can't navigate away.
Pull content from Google Classroom or the web - Teachers can quickly find content from their Classroom stream or other websites they have open.
Transcribe (and even translate) their own voice - Teachers can show students a live transcription of the teacher's voice, and optionally translate it into another language.
Respond to student hand raises - Teachers can see who has raised their hand (virtually) for a quick question.

For schools that are all-in on Google

The features Google is pre-announcing look great, and having them built into the operating system instead of relying on 3rd party extensions will make for a compelling product for many schools. The only catch we see is that this requires a full Google deployment to enjoy. Teachers and students both need managed Chromebooks. Teachers and students both need Workspace Plus. For schools that are already bought into the Google ecosystem, these will be huge advantages and may even allow them to save money on 3rd party classroom management products. But for schools that give their teachers Windows laptops or Macbooks, this simply won't work.

When is it coming?

Class tools was pre-announced today and Google says it will be available "in the coming months," so it sounds like this will be more of a 2025-2026 school year feature for full availability. For now, Google is soliciting interest through this Google Form.

Mystery solved on ClassManagementEnabled

We guess this explains that mysterious new ClassManagementEnabled setting we noticed in ChromeOS 132 :)