The coronavirus pandemic has shut down thousands of offices, schools and colleges around the world. While most organisations are giving their employees the option to work from home, teachers and parents of millions of students who are now left out of school are worried as to how to keep their children occupied and on track with their academics.
Many organisations and businesses are turning to video conferencing services like Zoom and Google Hangouts to reach out to their employees. But there is an app that has become quite popular with parents and teachers and has got a significant boost in downloads owing to its ability to get the out-of-school students their "classroom-at-home."
Bringing classrooms to homes
The aptly named 'Classroom' app comes from Google and has become one of the most popular apps on the Play Store and has just surpassed 50 million downloads.
It is also currently the No.1 educational app on both the Play Store and Apple's App Store in the US. Google Classroom has been around for quite some time and has been a free download all this while, but it has never been this popular before.
Most popular education app for free
According to data from AppBrain, a service that tracks app popularity, Google Classroom wasn't even in the top 100 most popular apps at the beginning of March. However, thanks to the 'shelter-at-home' orders in place in view of the coronavirus, the app has started to skyrocket since March 10 to reach the top 5 most popular list in the US over last week.
The app is gaining popularity all around the world and is among the most downloaded apps in countries like Mexico, Indonesia, Canada, Finland, Italy and Poland.
Some kids just hate school, even if it's conducted online
Zoom, which has been among the most downloaded video conferencing apps in recent times, has been a popular choice with not just corporate customers but also with families and friends who like to connect with each other while in quarantine. It is also a popular option for teachers to keep the curriculum up and running. But the app has recently been bombarded with hundreds of negative reviews from non-corporate users, especially students who seem to be annoyed by the fact that they need to be using the app in the first place.
