Apple Classroom is Apple's iPad management app for teachers. The setup process requires a lot of "behind the scenes" work to get everything in order (students, classes, teachers, schools, etc.). The degree of complexity can vary, depending on the size of your school/district, scheduling, and your SIS. Although the Apple Classroom app offers the ability for teachers to set up their own classrooms and have students join with a code, I prefer the "behind the scenes" setup for consistency and forcing students to be a part of the class.
Once it is deployed, though, Apple Classroom has some great features that allow your iPad to guide students through a lesson, see their progress, and keep them on track. With Apple Classroom, you can launch the same app on every student device at the same time, or launch a different app for each group of students. Just as a side note (because I still call them by the wrong names sometimes) Apple Classroom is a management tool, while Google Classroom is a tool that organizes content. The names are very similar but they do totally different things.
Since November, Apple has released two updates to Apple Classroom that have made it more stable. One of the newest features that they have added is an end of class summary. When you end your class, it lets you know what apps your students used and for how long they used those apps. One word of caution here - if students keep the app running in the background, Classroom may continue to count it. For example, one of our teacher ended a 45-minute class to find that a student spent 3+ hours on YouTube.
Like anything else there are a few quirks, but close to one-third of my teachers currently use Apple Classroom consistently and everyone that I talk to seems to love it. For anyone else interested in giving it a try, directions are attached to this post below.
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