Google rolls out new features and updates for Meet, Education products

American Internet giant Google on Thursday rolled out over 50 new features across its education products and also launched the next generation of GSuite for Education with a focus on robust security tools, as well as new capabilities for Google Classroom and Google Meet.

To begin with, the Google Classroom Android app will now work offline, or with intermittent connections. This will allow students to review assignments, open Google Drive attachments, and use Google Docs–all without an internet connection.

The second update is an improved mobile grading for educators and teachers in the Classroom Android app. This will allow them to switch between student submissions, grading of work while reviewing, and sharing of feedback.

Lastly, Google said it will roll-out Classroom add-ons to teachers using Education Plus of Teaching and Learning Tools to enable better integration of EdTech tools and content in Classroom.

Coming to Google Meet, it will start offering support for multiple moderators/hosts from later this year and they all will have access to moderation controls to ensure better conduct of the sessions.

Secondly, Google Meet will now come with an ‘end meeting for all’ function which will prevent students from staying connected on a call after the teacher has left.

Another moderation feature that has been added to the video conferencing app is the ‘mute all’ function. This will allow educators to easily mute all participants at once, and decide whether students can unmute themselves or not.

“We look forward to working together to reimagine learning and push the boundaries of what is possible so that everyone has access to the quality learning experiences they deserve,” said Bani Dhawan, Head of Education – South Asia, Google.

Side by side Google has also launched the new generation of GSuite for Education–Google Workspace for Education–which included all commonly used products such as Classroom, Meet, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, amongst others.

Google’s free edition G Suite for Education will also be renamed to Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals, according to an official statement.

Google has also introduced three new paid editions: Google Workspace for Education Standard, The Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Google Workspace for Education Plus for institutions seeking an expansive toolset.