Google Adds New Features to Google Classroom and Meet
Aug. 12, 2020In the wake of coronavirus pandemic, several schools and colleges across the globe have switched to online classes. To support the transition,Google Meetand Classroom are gaining a few new features. These features will help improve the experience of students and teachers during online classes.
Firstly, Google Classroom is gaining support for10 Indian languagesincluding Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, and Urdu. With this addition, Google Classroom supports a total of 54 languages.
Considering the fact that several users are new to Google Classroom, Google is making it easier for students and teachers tomanage their tasks with a to-do widget. Students will see a to-do widget, while teachers will get a to-review widget. It will contain date-based tasks classified across Assigned, Missing, and Done sections.Image: Google
Google is making link sharing easier on Classroom. Apart from a Copy link button, there’s a Share button to share the invite link of the online class across apps like WhatsApp or Telegram.Image: Google
The Mountain View giant isenhancing originality reportswith this update. In case you didn’t know, originality report checks for plagiarism. The number of originality reports per class has been increased from three to five. Teachers also have the option to print, save, and download reports to share with students and parents. Originally reports will come to Google Slides and Docs in the future.
Other features coming to Classroom include student engagement metrics, deeper integration with other tools, offline connectivity improvements, and integration of admin capabilities to help troubleshoot Classroom issues.
Coming to Google Meet features, the software giant is bringing new administrative controls to meeting moderators. Below are the new administrative features for Google Meet arriving in September:
As far as other visual improvements are concerned,Google Meet will gain 7×7 grid supportthat lets you see up to 49 students at the same time. A collaborative whiteboard is also coming to Meet this September.
In October,Google Meet will gain background blur and custom backgrounds. It is worth noting that admins can disable custom backgrounds if needed. For G Suite Enterprise for Education customers, Google Meet will also have an attendance tracking feature and breakout rooms.Image: Google
Other features that are coming to Google Meet later this year on G Suite Enterprise for Education include hand-raising for students to ask doubts and Q&A options along with polls.
Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.
