Our Top 5 Highlights of Updates on Google For Education

Google for Education has released several new features that will benefit students. A few of the ones we thought were important to highlight are the New reading mode feature in Chrome browser, Adding interactive questions to YouTube videos, Adding closed captions to Meet recordings, Keeping track of class activities with timer and stopwatch chips, and one of the most anticipated features is the AI feature that will be built into Google Classroom that will help design practice sets for educators. 

We believe these updates will help improve Google For Education products for educators and students. We will have training videos on these updates in the next few months. Take a look below for descriptions of the new features. Keep an eye out for the upcoming training videos!

New reading mode feature in Chrome browser
One of our newest features to support this effort is reading mode, a customizable reader view coming to the side panel in Chrome browser. Reading mode reduces distracting elements on the screen, like images and videos, to help you focus on a page’s primary content. You can also customize settings like the typeface, font size and spacing, and text and background color. Reading mode will be available in Chrome browser in ChromeOS in M114.

Add interactive questions to YouTube videos.
Educators will soon be able to add questions to a YouTube video and assign it to students, all within Classroom. As the video plays, students can answer the questions, get real-time feedback on their responses and rewatch the video as needed. Educators can receive insights about their student’s progress, like which questions they struggled with. Express interest in the beta, which will be available in English, Japanese, Malay, Portuguese and Spanish.

Add closed captions to Meet recordings.
You can now add captions in English, French, German, Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish to Meet recordings, with more languages coming later this year.

Keep track of class activities with timer and stopwatch chips.
 Educators can use timer and stopwatch chips for class activities, keeping track of how much time is left or how long a certain exercise took. Timer and stopwatch chips are rolling out today. Try them by typing @timer and @stopwatch in Docs.

Practice sets use AI to help educators transform their existing teaching.
Practice sets use AI to help educators transform their existing teaching content into interactive assignments and provide more personalized support. As teachers add questions to their practice set, they’ll see suggestions for skills to focus on — like solving equations with decimals or writing thesis statements. Based on the skills teachers select, students will receive helpful hints if they get stuck. Educators can also add interactive questions to YouTube videos in Classroom so that students can answer questions with real-time feedback, and educators can get insights into student performance. And with Screencast on ChromeOS, students and teachers can record, trim, transcribe, and share lessons, presentations and demos, all with new demo tools and in a dozen new languages.

Don’t forget to check out our training for School Administrative Assistants, Secretaries and Paraprofessionals. These trainings have ongoing enrollment.

If you're looking for your Paraprofessional training, check out our Digital Paraprofessional Institute.

Digital Paraprofessional Institute Benefits:

• Over 4 hours of online asynchronous training videos 
• All training is focused on the Google needs of the school-based paraprofessional and supporting students in the digital world.
• Access to On-Demand Google Workspace Library for one year
• Access to a Digital Bulletin with tips and tricks​ 

Consider signing your team up for the online and asynchronous Digital Secretary Institute. Visit Digital Secretary Institute for more information.

 Digital Secretary Institute Benefits:

• 1 Year of Access to On-Demand Google Workspace Library
• Individual or Group Rates
• Over 9 hours of training videos and training events
• Two Live Webinars while they occur or in the Institute Library
• One Live Online Google Workshop Support Event
• Customized 30-minute training video based on group type
• A Digital Bulletin aligned with modules.