Google Meet announced today that it will launch later this year a number of key features designed specifically for the education community. With the release of these new features, Google Meet will definitely be one of the best platforms for conducting classes remotely. The anticipated features will touch on two main areas: provide teachers and educators with more functionalities to facilitate the moderation of their online classes and introduce tools to enhance students engagement in online learning.
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| Source: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/education/new-meet-features-for-edu/ |
1- Moderating online classes
Starting later this year, G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education users will have access to a number of new moderation features that will help them better control how to run their online classes. These include:
A- Managing meeting attendees
“When someone asks to join a meeting (or “knocks”), they won’t be able to knock again after being ejected from a meeting, and a knock will no longer show up after a moderator rejects it twice. Plus, we’re updating the knocking interface to make knocks less intrusive for educators. Moderators will also be able to end the meeting for all participants, ensuring no students linger after the teacher has left. And we’ll soon block anonymous attendees from joining any Education meetings by default, though schools will be able to opt-in to allow anonymous participants.”
B- Blur out video background
Instead of displaying your home setting as the background of your video, educators and students will be able to blur out their surroundings or replace their background “with presets or uploaded images (with admin controls to disable this functionality).”
C- Other features
A number of other moderation features will also be introduced later this year. These include: “the ability to mute all participants at the same time, disable in-meeting chat for participants, and restrict who can present. We’ll also provide a setting that requires that the moderator join before the meeting can begin. You’ll hear more from us on these new features in the coming months.”
2- Enhancing students engagement in online learning
Some of the features that will be introduced later on this year are meant to help teachers and educators boost students’ creative learning and enhance their engagement in virtual classes. These include:
A- Hand raising to facilitate and organize participation in discussions
B- Collaborative whiteboard where students and teachers can exchange and share ideas and learning materials
C- Tiled view displaying up to 49 participants at once
D- Closed captions for additional languages
C- Other features: Google Meet will also introduce a number of premium features that include: “attendance tracking to provide a record of which students joined the class, breakout rooms so educators can split classes into smaller groups, Q&A 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.”
