Google Workspace for Education is presented in the ‘Learning with Google’ event and the company took the opportunity to bring us more than 50 new features for its education ecosystem, from the Google Classroom tool to Google Meet.
The pandemic has revolutionized education and teleworking solutions have gained much more strength. Google knows this and therefore wanted to take advantage of this event to showcase their work, inaugurated by Google CEO Sundar Pichai himself.
G Suite for Education becomes Google Workspace for Education
The first changes come for G Suite for Education, which becomes Google Workspace for Education. Google explains that more than 170 million students and educators use Google Workspace for Education. For them, Google will create three new subscription levels: Standard, Advanced, and Plus, with up to 100TB space for schools and universities. It is a huge improvement, Google understands it will be enough to supply all storage needs.
Extensions will be added to Google Classroom
Regarding its Google Classroom application, the company explains that they have 150 million users, 40 million more than last year. In this case, during 2021 Classroom will be updated with different improvements. Third-party extensions will arrive including options such as Kahoot! or Adobe.
In addition to the extensions, at the end of the year Classroom will allow obtaining better statistics of the students, it will be easier to check which are the most active students.
In addition, and thinking of those students who have difficulty accessing a good connection, Classroom will allow downloading the content to work offline. This option will be available at the end of the year and on Android.
The Classroom will also incorporate options such as an improvement in the creation of photos, being able to attach images of homework, and edit them directly from the phone.
Google Meet will also get an update. According to the company’s statistics, the equivalent of 1,300 years of learning is done every day through its video call application. In this case, new features for teachers will arrive, this will allow teachers to control the room or meeting more easily.
Google explains that Meet for Chromebooks will improve its performance and also emoji reactions will arrive at the application. This is an option available in other tools such as Skype, which will now also be in Meet.
Improvements in Chrome OS
Chromebooks have surpassed Macbooks for the first time in 2020. Google announces that 40 new devices with Chrome OS for education will arrive during the first quarter of 2021, many of them will be provided with LTE connectivity.
Regarding Chromebooks, Google announces 500 new policies for the Management Console, which will help improve the experience and accessibility of these devices. Among the new options, Chrome OS will also allow direct screen recording, so teachers and students can share what appears on their devices in real-time.
Without revealing many details, Google explains that they are working on an educational assistant. It would be a modification of the Google Assistant. What we understand is that instead of giving links or videos as a result, it would give an explanation. The idea is to help students when the teacher is not available.
This educational assistant will give us an explanatory answer, giving importance to the steps and not only to the answer. For the moment, more details about this project are unknown.
