Latest Google for Education Updates

Last week was ‘Learning with Google’ week and Google launched over 50+ updates to their education products, including Classroom, Meet, Chrome and more. It shows they are listening to educators across the world as the majority of changes have been requested by users, including the ability to end a Google Meet for all participants.

I won’t spoil all the new and up and coming feature changes, but you can read about them all here.

Google have always maintained that their education products will always be free to schools, and this promise remains, but we say goodbye to G Suite for Education and hello to Google Workspace for Education. The ‘Workspace’ nomenclature ushers in a new era of increased integration between apps, bringing teaching, learning, connecting and sharing closer together into a seamless space.

The name change is not the only big difference, as the free and paid for versions have now been split in to 4, to allow all users of Googles’ educational products the best of focussed services.

Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals is the free version that is the building block of all of your Google education products.

The Teaching and Learning Upgrade splits out all the advanced teaching and learning features found in Meet and Classroom, including breakout rooms, attendance reports and originality reports.

Google Workspace for Education Standard focuses on the security and device management across your sites and users with full access to Security Centre and advanced audits.

Google Workspace for Education Plus is a combination of all the above products to provide a comprehensive solution across your Google domains.

Chromebooks themselves are to get some updates with new laptop/tablet ‘convertible’ models from manufacturers appearing soon and Google releasing a tool to help you choose the right Chromebook for all your users. Other great updates are coming to the Chromebooks themselves including a new screen recording tool that will be an essential feature for teachers creating and sharing their own resources.

These are all fantastic updates that not only shows that Google are hugely committed to education, but they are willing to work alongside educators to improve the experience for the benefit of all.

As always Computeam are here to help and we have a wealth of experience in delivering effective educational solutions into schools, so please do contact us if you need any further help or guidance.