This a product announcement that may not reflect the exact current state of our product. Check out our dedicated Google Classroom help to get a the latest resources.
Hi Everyone,
Last year for the ISTE 2016, we launched the music notation assignments with Flat on Google Classroom: the possibility to create musical activities accessible to your students in one click from Google Classroom.
After this update, we have heard incredible stories about your usage of Classroom with Flat, you can discover one in a previous blog post.
Today we have some exciting news for Google Drive and Google Classroom users, I will let you discover the updates right now!
A default Flat folder in Google Drive
We haven't changed our Google Drive integration so much since the Google I/O 2015. We know that some of you prefer creating their new music scores using their Drive and some of you directly from the Flat interface. In this last case, we were creating the new shortcuts at the root of your Drive, making it a little bit messy.
Over the past few weeks, we worked on moving to the last Drive API major version (v3) and chose to create a new default "Flat" folder in your Drive, folder that would contain all your scores created with Flat:
You can rename and move this folder without any issues. If you create a new document in another folder, it will also be available in this "Flat" directory (the result of a "Shift + Z" in Google Drive 😉 ):
This update is available for all individual and education customers. Thanks to the ones who already sent great feedback about it!
Group permissions with Drive and Classroom
We have been supporting single user permissions in Google Drive with 2-ways synchronization since the very beginning. We also have been creating different groups for your classes on Flat and using them for the assignments and shared content on Flat:
Today we launch the support of group permissions in Google Drive and Google Classroom. All of our existing "Students" and "Teachers" groups now match the groups automatically created by Google Classroom in your G Suite for Education organization.
It means for example, that for the Google Classroom courses synchronized on Flat, we automatically handle the new group permissions on the scores that you share from your Drive as materials in the Classroom Stream:
Edit and delete assignments on Flat
You can now directly edit the properties and delete Classroom assignments directly on Flat, without having to go back to Google Classroom:
Drive scores in Google Classroom coursework
Last year we launched the support of Google Classroom assignments using link materials (see an example below). It works great and provides a seamless experience for your students that can get started in 1-click and send their submissions directly from our music score editor.
With the new Google Classroom API update available today, we have been working on integrating Flat, Google Drive and Google Classroom together:
- Music scores shared as assignment materials will be attached as Drive files when possible;
- Students' submissions files will also be attached as Drive files for the students using the Flat Google Drive app. These Flat files will also be available in their coursework folder, just like regular Google Docs files.
This last update will progressively be available for all the Flat for Education users who synchronize their classes with Google Classroom.
You can read more about this Google Classroom update on the Google Blog and the G Suite Developer Blog. If you have any feedback, please feel free send it to our team, we will be happy to read you!
Vincent & the Flat Team