With the start of a new school year and ever-changing plans, many districts are making efforts to provide resources and updates to accommodate working and learning remotely. Globally, educators have transitioned to a hybrid setting that involves working from home and participating in distance learning initiatives. Recently, Google for Education has launched 50 new features in Google Meet, Google Classroom, and G Suite to help educators and professionals alike provide the best support for their students. Here is a few new Google for Education features that every teacher should know about to utilize and enhance productivity.

Google for Education Teacher Center

With so many resources available, Google for Education’s Teacher Center provides free training and professional development tools so educators can feel confident and comfortable when teaching remotely. Join a community of other educators and professionals alike and learn the best tips of tricks to working from home. 

New features in Google Classroom 

To help educators and students have a seamless experience working remotely, Google has created ways to promote more collaborative learning and interaction:

• Teachers and students can utilize the “to-do” widget on the Classes page to track any existing, upcoming and past assignments/what has been graded
• Simply share a link to invite students and parents to join their class meeting
• Originality reports have ramped up in efforts with the ability to run reports five times per course (previously it was three times per course)
• The ability to see potential plagiarism again webpages and between student submissions at each school (available with G Suite Enterprise for Education)

Google Assignments

An incredible update for non-Classroom users, Assignments was created to improve your learning management system and ramp up productivity. Teachers can now create and distribute personalized copies of student work to each individual’s Google Drive folder. This new feature is especially important for educators in staying organized during their school day and definitely helps students to have full transparency of the expectations set for them in the classroom. 

Google’s Tech Toolkit for families and guardians

It is essential that families and guardians also have access and updates to their child’s schoolwork as this creates a more collaborative environment for all when guardians and educators can communicate effortlessly. This toolkit will help families and guardians understand what is expected of them, their child and how to help make this process successful for your student.

More Google for Education updates

Google will be rolling out with several more features as we approach the end of the year. Educators can look forward to exciting updates like new moderator controls for full functionality, breakout rooms and attendance tracking for tracking progress and engagement, and so much more. Everyone can benefit from updates like this as it provides more insight to their classroom participation. 

Google for Education has taken the world by storm and has become an essential tool in working productively while working or learning remotely. Each update and feature works hand in hand with the other to provide the ultimate seamless experience with Google for Education applications. Stay tuned for other updates as they roll out later in the year and in the meantime, be sure to check out other helpful Google tips and tricks like how to present and share your screen in Google and other distance learning tools for educators on ctl.net.