With an aim to empower teachers and students, tech giant Google announced that it is sharing new updates to Chromebooks, Google Classroom and Google Meet. Google claims that these updates will help teachers and students focus on interconnectivity, control and efficiency in the Classroom to Google Meet. “Now, Google Meet calls can be auto-transcribed directly into a Google Doc for easy lesson reviews and the ability to search for keywords and concepts,” Shantanu Sinha, Director, Google for Education, said in a blogpost.
The company is also adding new features like the Screencast app, built into Chrome OS in M103, wherein students and educators can record and edit videos that serve as lessons or demos. The app can record the screen, trim videos, and share them, and it also offers more advanced tools. After recording a video, users can add images and other resources to enrich the lesson and make it more engaging. It’s even possible to draw on videos using a touchscreen with your finger or a pen. These files can then be easily shared through Google Drive so other students can access resources to help them learn.
There is also a new classroom feature named Cast moderator. It enables the students to share their screen with the entire class, in order to demonstrate a specific process or a resource that they have found or done correctly. The Cast moderator also gives teachers the control to stop other students from casting, and the whole communication process uses a secure code so only people with the access code can cast.
Google will also allow students and teachers to access more than 15 EdTech tools with add-ons, like Kahoot! and Pear Deck with a single login. The company claims that it will help teachers to create engaging assignments and see new grading experiences, while students don’t have to worry about remembering extra passwords and navigating external websites. These add-ons will be available with the Education Plus or Teaching and Learning Edition.
On the Google Workspace side of things, there are a bunch of new education features for Google Meet. For starters, it’s now possible to automatically transcribe meetings in Meet into a Google Doc so you always have a written record of your meetings. It’s also going to be possible to host live-streams directly to YouTube from Google Meet, as well as host polls and Q&A sessions during a live stream in order to increase engagement.
Google is also rolling out new integrations and tools to improve teachers’ day-to-day tasks and help students grow their skills.
“Practice sets lean into adaptive learning by giving students instant feedback on their answers and real-time support if they get stuck — providing automated insights for teachers to identify potential gaps in students’ understanding,” Sinha mentioned.
Practice sets are now globally available in beta, and in English only, for Google Workspace for Education customers with Education Plus or Teaching and Learning Upgrade.
