In the midst of all the change and uncertainty in the world over the past several months, the education community has never wavered in its commitment to learning and supporting students. At Google, we’re honored to work on tools that lighten the load for teachers, school leaders, families, and especially the students who have navigated learning from home with grace and resilience. 

As educators worldwide have reinvented their practice online, we’re also adapting our tools to meet the evolving needs of their new educational landscape. This year, we’re taking a virtual approach to “back to school” with The Anywhere School, bringing Google for Education announcements to hundreds of thousands of viewers in more than 250 countries around the world. 

Inspired by your feedback, we’re sharing over 50 new features across Meet, Classroom, G Suite and other products. Check out our other posts for deeper dives into the features, and continue to watch the keynote sessions, which are running live for the next 24 hours and will be available on demand if you need to catch up later. Here’s a birds-eye view of what’s coming. 

A safer, more engaging Meet experience

Earlier this year, we announced new features coming to Google Meet to improve moderation and engagement. Today, we’re sharing more details about these upcoming launches and when they’ll be available. Here are a few highlights:

• In September, we’ll kick off with a larger tiled view of up to 49 people and an integrated Jamboard whiteboard for collaboration. We’ll also release new controls so moderators can choose to always join first, end meetings for all participants, disable in-meeting chat, and much more.

• In October, we’ll launch custom and blurred backgrounds to provide some extra privacy. Breakout rooms and attendance tracking will also be launching for all Google Enterprise for Education customers, allowing for more engaged classes and insights on participation.

• Later this year, we’re rolling out hand raising for all customers and Q&A and polling for G Suite Enterprise for Education customers. Plus, we’ll launch a new temporary recordings feature which will be available to all Education customers for free (premium recordings will still be part of G Suite Enterprise for Education). 

Better support for students, educators and admins in Classroom

With more teachers around the world using Classroom more than ever before, we’re working to make Classroom simpler and more efficient with new features.  

• A new to-do widget on the Classes page will help students see what’s coming up, what’s missing, and what’s been graded. 
• Teachers can now share a link to invite students to their class, which makes joining a class much easier. 
• Classroom will soon be available in 10 additional languages, for 54 languages total.

Classroom also gives you access to originality reports, which are now better than ever. For example, educators can soon run originality reports five times per course (up from three previously). And with G Suite Enterprise for Education, educators will be able to see matches for potential plagiarism not only against webpages, but between student submissions at their school.

We’re giving admins more powerful tools to manage G Suite and Classroom. For example, school leaders with Enterprise licenses will have greater visibility into Classroom usage via new Data Studio dashboards, which allow admins to see active classes, measure feature adoption, and monitor teacher and student engagement. To support teachers and admins, we’re making it easier to sync Classroom grades with a push to your Student Information System (SIS), starting with Infinite Campus customers (and more SIS to come). Keep reading for more details on what’s new in Classroom.

Enhance your learning management system with Assignments

Help students turn in their best work with Docs

We recently launched SmartCompose and Auto Correct in Docs for educators and students. This will help them compose high-quality content faster by cutting back on repetitive writing, while reducing the chance of spelling and grammatical errors (by the end of this month, admins will be able to disable both SmartCompose and Auto Correct if they choose). Soon we’re also launching citations so students can format and manage their sources directly in Docs. With the citations tool, after adding the relevant attributes for a source, students can insert formatted in-text citations or a bibliography.

New resources and tools that continue to support families

As many parents and guardians supported their childrens’ learning from home this year, we heard about a big need for more resources and training for families on Google’s tools. To help, we’ve created the Tech Toolkit for Families and Guardians, which helps parents better understand the technology that their kids use in the classroom. Plus, we’ve added school accounts to Chrome OS so students can access Classroom and their school files while having the safety net of Family Link. We’re sharing many more product updates for families here.

Finally, educators can find free training, resources, and professional development programs like the new Certified Coach program to support them as they use these tools and features in their classroom in the new Teacher Center. 

Moving forward together

There’s so much more to share with you about what’s coming to Google for Education, and we encourage you to take some time to watch the keynote sessions from The Anywhere School event for all the updates. 

Most importantly, thank you for your partnership. We’re grateful for the insights you’ve shared with us, and we’ll continue to evolve our products to meet the unique needs of this moment. By working together, we can provide students with the education they deserve, no matter where it’s taking place.

Editor’s note: On August 11, 2020 Google for Education kicked off a global back-to-school event, The Anywhere School. Check out the full recap of product launches and our collection of announcements.

Google has always aimed to invest in products, programs and philanthropy that make learning possible for everyone, anywhere. This year we’ve been especially inspired by the teachers and students around the world who have used our tools in new creative ways and at unprecedented scale. 

As schools start this next semester, we’re excited to share the many new capabilities we’re bringing to Meet and Classroom, to support teaching and learning, no matter where it’s taking place. Let’s start with what’s coming to Meet.

Control for moderators 

Over the next few months, we’re giving moderators of Education meetings more controls for managing their virtual classes. Here are new capabilities, arriving in September, that moderators will have:

• Prohibit participants from joining meetings after they’ve been ejected or after they’ve been denied entry twice (launching later this month) 
• End meetings for all participants when class is finished
• Manage join requests with ease by accepting or rejecting them in bulk
• Disable in-meeting chat and set restrictions on who can present during a meeting 
• A setting that requires the teacher to join first

Interactivity in Meet 

Opportunities for interactivity are critical for distance learning and we’re sharing new features to increase engagement with your students virtually:

Launching in September

• A larger tiled views with a 7x7 grid so you can see up to 49 students at once 

• A collaborative whiteboard with Jamboard in Meet so you can encourage students to share ideas and try creative approaches to lessons 

Launching in October

• Blur or replace backgrounds so everyone feels more comfortable during distance-learning classes. Note: Admins can disable custom backgrounds as needed.

• Attendance tracking to see and track which students attended virtual class (G Suite Enterprise for Education) 

• Breakout rooms so educators can split classes into simultaneous small group discussions (G Suite Enterprise for Education) 

Launching later this year

• Hand-raising to help you identify students who may need help or have a question 

• Q&A features to provide a way for students to ask questions without disrupting the flow of the class discussion or lesson, and polling to engage students to share their voice (G Suite Enterprise for Education) 

Additionally, we’ll launch temporary recordings later this year, which will be available to all Education customers for free (premium recordings will still be part of G Suite Enterprise for Education). With this new feature, any meeting host can record a meeting and share the recording within their domain for up to 30 days before the video expires. Given disparities in internet access, temporary recordings are intended to help students or meeting participants replay a class or session they couldn't attend live. Temporary recordings cannot be shared outside the host’s domain or downloaded. We’re granting continued free access to premium recordings until temporary recordings are available later this year (note: this is replacing the promotion for access to premium Meet features including live streaming and meetings of up to 250 participants that will be ending on September 30th). 

Now, let’s cover new features you can expect in Classroom.

Helping students and instructors stay on top of their upcoming work

Both students and instructors have risen to the challenge of learning and teaching from home, but it can be tough to stay on top of what they need to do and when. To help instructors and students better discover and track their work in Classroom, the Classes page will soon have a to-do widget for students and a to-review widget for teachers.

New, easier ways to join classes

In addition to sharing course join codes, educators can now share a link to join classes with a single click. Link-sharing allows educators to share classes anywhere they communicate with students, including in messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.

Spot missed citations with enhanced originality reports

Originality reports, which are built into Classroom and Assignments, provide educators with flags for potential plagiarism in student work and also help students quickly identify passages that may need citations. Now, we’re making originality reports even more helpful.

First, we’re raising the number of originality reports that educators can use per class from three to five. (Educators with G Suite Enterprise for Education licenses will continue to get unlimited originality reports.) Educators will also be able to print, save and download reports to share with students, parents and administrators. Soon educators and students will be able to run originality reports on Google Slides, in addition to Google Docs, as well as in multiple languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Indonesian and Italian.

Check for potential plagiarism between students 

Traditionally, originality reports have surfaced matches for potential plagiarism against hundreds of billions of web pages and over 40 million books. Now, instructors with G Suite Enterprise for Education licenses will be able to see potential plagiarism between students at their school. Starting in a few weeks, originality reports will check submissions against a private, school-owned repository of past student work to look for student-to-student matches. Student submissions are automatically added when instructors use originality reports in Classroom. If admins want to actively manage the repository, they can manually add files or remove documents directly. Google never has access to or the ability to use this repository—it’s owned and used solely by the school domain.

More visibility and tools for Classroom admins

Classroom now available in additional languages

With Classroom usage quickly growing around the world, we’re making it accessible to more learners in their native language. We’ll be launching Classroom in 10 additional Indian languages. Soon Classroom will support over 54 languages globally; with even more coming in the future.

More support from partners

Classroom features coming soon

In the coming month, we will provide a more detailed roadmap to help education leaders and teachers understand and prepare for other improvements that will launch to Classroom throughout the school year.  Here’s a sneak peek at some of the specific areas we’ll be working on:

• Student engagement metrics: Educators will be able to see stats that help track how students are interacting in Google Classroom each day.

• Deeper integration with other teaching tools. With Classroom now playing a role as “mission control” for many classes, we'll enable more seamless integrations with the content and learning tools schools are using alongside Google’s tools.

• Mobile offline improvements. We know that home and mobile internet connections aren’t always available or reliable, so we’re working to update the Classroom mobile apps to work much better even with intermittent connectivity.

If we can’t all physically be together in our schools this year, we’re committed to making Classroom and Meet even better to bring everyone together online. Please continue to share your feedback, and we’ll keep adapting our tools to meet your evolving needs.