New Google EDU Features as Mentioned by Michelle Emerson

 If you have not already heard, there are some new Google Edu features coming in the coming weeks. My influencer, Michelle Emerson with Pocketful of Primary explains these updates and shares how they will be useful in your classroom. 


In her video, Michelle mentioned some updates. Below, I have highlighted the updates coming to Google Classroom, Docs, Slides, and Chrome. As a teacher who primarily uses Google chrome, I am personally pumped about these updates. 

Google Classroom: AI is going to begin being an option through "Practice Sets". Students will be able to identify gaps in understanding in the class level and student level. These sets can be shared with others. 

Google Docs: You can now add some pre-made templates in this update. For example, being able to choose between meeting notes and email templates, makes it comparable to the templates also in Microsoft Word. There is now an option for timers and stopwatches within documents. 

Google Slides: You now have the control to see Speaker notes on Google Slides when presenting. This gives the ability to see your notes when presenting. The other new future is the ability to co-create presentations and co-present them through the use of two devices. 

Google Chrome: There will be a new "reading mode", where you can reduce distracting images and links when reading a document. You can change the text/font size as well. 

Thoughts on the Google Updates:

When learning about these new updates, it does make me very excited. The only issue, which I did mention above, is the fact that these updates come at a cost. I personally did not know that you could have Google subscriptions, but these updates come to education plus users only. I did some personal research about the subscriptions and an educational plus user has access to some enhanced features that regular google users do not have access to.


All in all, five dollars per year is not that expensive, and considering the new features and upgrades, it might be worth looking into when it comes to lesson planning and transforming my students educational experiences. One aspect that I find particularly interesting is the reader mode that comes with Google Chrome. This reader mode could limit distractions for students when they are working on researching, or even just browsing on the Internet. I could see upper elementary students benefiting from this feature. 

Overall, I would give this technology update a 3/5. If these features already came standard for chrome users without having the education plus subscription, I would probably give this a higher rating. However, if I have a class of 26 students, we are talking about making an investment of $130 for just my classroom of students. If I thought middle school, it would maybe be something that I would consider, but the fact that I just teach first grade and we do not use Google as much, I do not think that I would benefit from this technology update.

Comments

  1. Dr. ThomasMay 1, 2023 at 5:01 PM

    Salem,
    Great post. I would imagine more and more that Google is seeing users paying for extensions like Mote and wanting to get also benefit. I didn't understand the AI feature as stated above. Did you? While the cost is nominal, it adds up when you buy for the class along with other tech. Classroom tech starts to look like your streaming bill. Nothing is much but everything is a lot.
    Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete

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