In an effort to further support distance learning and as a direct response to the increased use of Google Meet, Google has added several new security and engagement features to the software that will help educators manage their interactions more easily. The official blog post contains a large amount of content that is discussed in detail, but we are going to simplify it for you here today.
Safety
First, Google Measure gets several tools that will help teachers protect not only their students but also their bandwidth. In addition to last year’s security checks and advanced security locks, they will be adding the following tools over the coming months:
- An option for teachers to end meetings for everyone, including students in breakout rooms
- Mute all participants
- Control when students can dampen themselves
- Access to key moderation tools for educators on tablets or phones (determine who can join a meeting or screen sharing)
- When meetings are generated from Google Classroom, students cannot join in front of the teacher, and teachers will host by default
- Meeting will look at the Classroom timetable and only allow registered students to participate in a meeting
- Meetings not started from Classroom will support multiple hosts so that teachers can help facilitate each other
Wow! It’s quite a bit. I especially like that most of these features are focused on keeping students and teachers on the same page. With distance learning, I have heard that many users have had extensive problems with synchronization in areas related to procedures and that it has been a challenge to repeat the nuances of the physical classroom on the internet. Here’s the hope that these updates may fix a bunch of them when they are finally released!
Involvement
In terms of involvement improvements, Google Measure adds emoji responses so students can express themselves while muted. In this way, teachers can assess responses to their content without being interrupted. Emoji can be manually selected by the teacher, and students can even adjust the skin color of the emoji to better represent themselves. While I feel like this should have been a thing for over a year now, I think video conferencing was rather a basic pre-pandemic, and that emoji would probably be seen as ‘unprofessional’.
We & # 39; ve already discussed the Google Meet updates on Chromebooks, but now, the company improves the performance of the software across the board for users with a low bandwidth connection! It is fantastic and aligns well with the needs of the current state of our society.
Teachers will also be able to set up breakthrough spaces in Calendar early. This will help them save time and kiss through the lesson plan and no longer get caught up on how to sort people out for smaller group sessions.
Finally, students will be able to get a transcript of the meeting if they were unable to attend that day. However, it comes later this year and will probably be the last thing to run. Google Meet has become just one animal of a distance learning tool, and they take it very seriously. It’s amazing to see how much work they’ve been doing on this since the pandemic started, and I feel that while they’re really focused on how they can serve their users, it can also be fueled by the power of competition for innovation. At this point, I can think of nothing that they have not added, or intend to add.
