Google Workspace for Education, formerly known as G Suite for Education, offers simple and flexible tools so your school community can better collaborate, manage classes, and create safe learning environments. Our latest updates include improved collaboration between our products and security enhancements for all Google Workspace for Education customers.
The next evolution of collaboration
Last month we announced the smart canvas, a new experience that improves collaboration in the tools you use every day, like Docs, Sheets, and Slides, by making them even more interactive and intelligent.
A new feature of this experience is smart chips, which let you get useful information from other Google Workspace products while you work on a document. For example, if you’re a student working on a group project, you can quickly insert files from Drive or tag other students in your group directly in your document by typing the “@” sign. Once people are tagged, simply hover over their name to quickly chat, email, or schedule a meeting.
Smart chips let you get useful information from other Google Workspace products while you work on a document
We also recently added interactive checklists to Docs to help you stay on track. Checklists are similar to bulleted lists, except that you can check off items once they are complete. In the coming months, we’ll be introducing table templates in Docs to help you collaborate faster and more effectively. For example, topic voting templates allow you to easily collect feedback directly in documents.
Stay on track with interactive checklists in Docs
Last year, We presentgrammar hints in Documents to help provide hints and catch tricky grammatical errors. For Education Plus customers, we’ll roll out the next phase of writing suggestions in Docs and add assisted analysis in Sheets later this year. In Docs, this includes warnings about offensive language and stylistic suggestions. Administrators can easily disable it if they prefer. In Sheets, assisted analysis provides formula suggestions that make it easy for everyone to gain insights from data. These suggestions can help guide students and reinforce concepts that improve their writing and analysis skills.
The documents will provide warnings about offensive language and stylistic suggestions.
Our products will also work better together so teachers can focus on what they do best. Now you can easily submit content to Google Meet directly from Docs, Sheets, and Slides with the click of a button. You can quickly introduce and view both participants and their content in the Meet tab. Later this year, we’re going a step further and enabling Education Plus customers to embed live Meet video calls into Docs, Sheets, and Slides, making it even easier to see each other while collaborating.
Embed live Meet video calls into Docs, Sheets, and Slides
We’re also making our tools easier to use so you can get your valuable time back. In Forms, we’ll be simplifying setup in the coming months so you can set up Forms the way you want quickly and easily. For example, you’ll see a new ‘Settings’ tab at the top of Forms with key settings that are easy to find, such as the option to make a Form a quiz and ways to control the default settings that apply to all new forms and quizzes. . We’re also launching over 20 new fonts so you can add fun, personal touches.
Quickly and easily configure Forms the way you want with simplified settings
Earlier this year, we announced that Forms would begin automatically saving your draft responses for 30 days or until your submission is complete. This feature will begin rolling out next month and will be available to everyone this summer.
Improve security for everyone who uses Google Workspace for Education
Providing your school community with a safe digital learning environment is a commitment and responsibility we take very seriously. We’re strengthening security for all Google Workspace for Education customers with Drive security improvements and additional advanced security for Education Plus and Education Standard customers.
All Google Workspace for Education customers already benefit from protections built into Google Drive that help block phishing and malware content from third-party organizations and users. In the coming weeks, we will be adding enhanced protections to Drive that will allow all Google Workspace for Education administrators to enable this type of protection within their organizations’ internal Drive to further defend against insider threats and accidental sharing of malware.
Additionally, Drive’s new trust rules will give administrators more advanced controls over how files can be shared within and outside their organization. For example, an administrator might allow a subset of teachers to share documents with anyone in their district, but only allow students to share files with people in their specific school. Drive Trust rules will be rolled out in beta version for Education Standard customers and Education Plus in the coming months.
Drive Trust rules will give administrators more advanced controls over how files can be shared within and outside their organization.
Administrators will soon have access to Drive tags, allowing them to categorize files stored in Google Drive to ensure they are handled correctly. Drive labels integrate with Google Workspace data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities so administrators can set rules at the appropriate sensitivity level. Even if teachers or staff forget to classify content on their own, files can be automatically classified based on DLP rules defined by the administrator. This can help administrators be more proactive in protecting some of their communities’ most sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information or proprietary research. Drive tags will also be planned to work with Google Vault, allowing administrators to set retention policies for a given sensitivity level. Drive labels are now available in Beta version for Education Standard customers and Education Plus.
Together, these improvements will change the way we do things, making it easier and safer to collaborate with anyone, from anywhere. By using these tools at school and at home, your students will develop important collaboration skills to be better prepared for the workplace of the future.
By Brian Hendricks. See the full article here.
